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THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH IN
SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

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"TURNBULL AND SPEARS, —

THE
DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

IN

SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

The Sixth Series of the Chalmers Lectures

BY THE LATE

JOHN MACPHERSON, M.A.

AUTHOR OF ‘' COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS,” “ CHRISTIAN
DOGMATICS,” “4 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND,” ETC.

EDITED BY

C. G. M‘CRIE, D.D.

EBdinburgb
MACNIVEN & WALLACE
1903

EXTRACT FROM THE DEED INSTITUTING THE
CHALMERS LECTURESHIP.

(The Deed being dated 26th May 1880.)

‘TI, Ropert Macriz, Esq. of Airds and Oban, considering that I feel

deeply interested in the maintenance of the principles of the Free Church

of Scotland, have transferred . . . the sum of £5000 sterling for the pur-

pose of founding a Lectureship in memory of the late Taomas CHALMERS,

D.L., LL.D., under the following conditions: namely—1. The Lecture-_
ship shall . . . be called Zhe Chalmers Lectureship ; 2. The Lecturer

shall hold the appointment for four years, and shall be entitled .

. to one-half of the income . . .; 3. The subject shall be ‘ Headship of
Christ over His Church and its Independent Spiritual Jurisdiction’ ;

4, The Lecturer shall be bound to deliver publicly a Course of not fewer

than six Lectures . . . in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in Aberdeen ;

5. The Lecturer shall be bound, within a year, to print and publish at his

own risk not fewer than 1500 copies . . . and deposit three copies in
the libraries of the Free Church Colleges; 6. One-half of the balance of
the income . . . shall be laid out in furnishing with a copy all the
Ministers and Missionaries of the Free Church.”

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Tue Rev. John Macpherson was born at Greenock in
1847. After graduating at the University of Glas-
gow, and receiving his theological training in the
Free Church Divinity Hall of that city, he gave four-
and-twenty years of his life to ministerial work at
Findhorn, a fishing village in Morayshire. On
retiring from this sphere of labour, he found his
home in Portobello, where he died suddenly on the
31st of March 1902.

As was written regarding him at the time of his
death by one who knew him intimately, ‘‘ Mr
Macpherson was an accomplished scholar, a_ solid
theologian, an able and wise defender of the faith, a
thoughtful Evangelical preacher, a staunch and loyal
friend, and a Christian man, absolutely true, fearless,
and uncompromising.” A diligent student and a
copious writer, he enriched theological and historical
literature with numerous translations of standard
German works, with Commentaries, Dictionaries, and
Handbooks of sterling value. The latest production
of his pen was “A History of the Church in Scotland,”
published in 1901.

Before that date he had been appointed Chalmers
Lecturer, and had chosen for the subject of his course

v

vi EDITOR'S PREFACE

“The Doctrine of the Church in Scottish Theology.”
The lectures had been delivered by him in successive
sessions in the United Free Colleges of Edinburgh
and Aberdeen.

At the request of the Lectureship Committee, I
undertook to read the lectures in the Glasgow Hall
during the session 1902-3, and thereafter edit them
for publication. In carrying out this trust, I have
sought faithfully to produce the lecturer's final form
of his work, a task of some difficulty, owing partly
to the excessively minute handwriting of the author,
and partly to the fact that at the time of his death
he had only written out one lecture, the remaining
five being in duplicate draft form. In the matter
of footnotes, I have a strong impression that had
Mr Macpherson been spared to publish his lectures
he would have increased their value for students
by supplying information with which he was so
richly furnished. And so I have supplemented
the few notes in the MS. with some of my own,
chiefly of a bibliographical nature. My notes and
references are marked with brackets. I also am
responsible for the Table of Contents and the Index.

C. G. M‘CrIE.

Ayr, May 1903.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.

PAGES
Tue ScortisH THEOLOGY —ItTs LITERATURE AND ITs DISTINC-

TIVE CHARACTERISTICS 3 ‘ : 3 Je ctr:

Central position of the doctrine of the Church in Scottish History
and Theology ; Present day interest in Church problems ; Old
Scottish theological writings comparatively little known;
Reasons for this in unattractiveness of the books; In lavish
use of Scripture phrases ; Specimen from Rutherfurd ; In con-
troversial method; In principles of Scripture interpretation
and verbal inspiration ; With all drawbacks the literature of
abiding value; Advantages of seventeenth and eighteenth
century writers ; Their scholarship; Works upon the doctrine
of the Church of Boyd, Cameron, Baillie, George Gillespie,
Samuel Rutherfurd ; Brief notices of James Durham, Brown of
Wamphray, Robert M‘Ward.

LECTURE II.

Tue IpEA OF THE CHURCH AND MEMBERSHIP INIT . . 54-90

Scottish Protestant Divines required to vindicate existence of the
Church ; Difference between Romish and Reformed doctrine of
the Church; Scottish Confession of 1560 upon the subject;
Controversy between Bellarmine and Boyd; Idea of Church
entertained by Scottish Presbyterians in opposition to
Romanists and Independents ; Distinction between the Church
as Visible and invisible; Brown of Wamphray versus The
Separatists and Romanists ; Church members and sealing ordi-
nances ; The notes or marks of the Visible Church must be
visible ; Difference in view between Rutherfurd and Boston as
to membership through Baptism.

vii

Vlil

CONTENTS

LECTURE IIL.

PAGES

CuuroH Unity—TueE Sin or Scuism . B : 91-128

Scottish conception of the Unity of the Church ; Catholicity of

CuurcH Purity—CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION

the conception ; Recognitions of the Papacy as a Church of
Christ ; Of its Baptism, Ministers and Discipline; Scottish
Divines averse to Separation; Rutherfurd and Durham on
Scandalous Divisions; Differences not grounds of Division;
Preaching of the Gospel the essential of a Church; The hier-
archical principle; How it works; Charge against Reformers
that ordination derived from Rome; How met by Rutherfurd ;
Society men averse to Separation; Durham’s six rules anent
Separation; Burnet and M‘Ward on Conformists and Non-
Conformists; The IJnformatory Vindication of 1686; The
Seceders of 1733; The later Seceders; Adam Gib; Welsh of
Irongray.

LECTURE IV.

Popular misconception regarding zeal for purity and exercise of

discipline in Church of Scotland; The discipline strict but not
inquisitorial ; Contrasted with the penitential exercises of Rome;
The Books of Discipline upon the subject ; Private admonitions to
precede public censure; Durham and Rutherfurd on the subject ;
Matthew xviii. 17—different views taken of the Church there
mentioned ; The Power of the Keys ; The Key of doctrine and
the Key of discipline ; Saving grace and serious profession distin-
guished ; Knox’s Liturgy ; Donald Cargill’s Excommunications ;
Order of the Ecclesiastical Discipline of 1556; Dr Edgar on
Scottish Church Discipline; Rutherfurd’s Free Disputation
against pretended Liberty of Conscience ; Froude upon Toleration.

LECTURE V.

129-158

CuurcH PowER—THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED . ; - 159-190

Separate Jurisdiction of Church and State recognised by Scottish

Reformers; Lost sight of in pre-reformation period; Second
Book of Discipline upon distinction ; also Act containing Causes
and Remedy of the Evils of the Kirk ; Return to pre-reformation
practices during Episcopal domination ; Andrew Melville and
King James VI.; Principal John Cunningham misjudges Mel-
ville ; So also Principal William Robertson ; The Black Acts ;
Dayid Black of St Andrews; Melville at Falkland Palace;
Baillie’s Historical Vindication against calumnies of Maxwell

CONTENTS 1x

PAGES

and Adamson ; John Welsh of Ayr ; Animadversions of 1585 ;
Second Book of Discipline upon potestas ordinis and potestas
jurisdictionis; Criticism of Dr Mair of Earlston’s Jurisdiction
im Matters E¢clesiastical ; Difference of opinion among Scottish
Divines as to duty of magistrate towards the Church ; Durham
on the subject in Treatise concerning Scandal ; George Gillespie
on the same.

LECTURE VI.
WHAT ACCORDING TO ScoTTisH THEOLOGY IS OF DivINE Riaut 191-224

Thomas Coleman Orientalist and Erastian ; His sermon before
the House of Commons in 1645; Resented by Westminster
Assembly ; George Gillespie’s tracts in answer to Coleman ;
What old Divines meant by a Divine Right; Gillespie’s daron’s
Rod Blossoming ; Baillie’s Disswasive from the Errors of the Time ;
Gillespie’s Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies and
An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland ;
Bishop Hall’s Assertion of Episcopacy by Divine Right; Ruling
Elders distinct from teaching Elders; Rutherfurd’s Dispute
touching Scandall and Christian Libertie ; Controverts Hooker ;
Details and particulars not required by those who claim a
Divine Right for Presbytery; The Five Articles of Perth;
Kneeling an act of adoration ; Sketches of Robert Bruce of
Edinburgh, Andrew Melville, Samuel Rutherfurd.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
IN SCOTTISH THEOLOGY.

LECTURE I.

THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY—ITS LITERATURE AND ITS
DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS.

In Scottish history and in the writings of Scottish
divines the idea of the Church holds a central and
obtrusively prominent position. Those who made the
history of Scotland by performing in her and on her be-
half actions which have made her annals worthy of the
name of history, whether the instrument by which
these deeds were effected was the pen or the sword,
set in the forefront of the battle and took as their
battle-cry, Christ and His Kirk. To them the Church
was as real, as essential, as important as Christ Him-
self. From their point of view Christ and the Church
are mutually implicated ideas. We can no more con-
ceive of Christ apart from the Church than we can
conceive of the Church apart from Christ. Our old
Scottish contenders for the truth, whether writing in
the study, preaching from the pulpit, or fighting on
the battlefield, maintained one constant and con-
sistent doctrine regarding Christ and His Church.

They thought of the two as they are conceived of
A 1

:
Z THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

by the Apostle in his familiar figure, constituting one
organism, of which Christ is the Head and the Church,
the body comprising many members. It was «as
evangelical theologians that our Scottish thinkers,
who have put their stamp upon the official documents
of their Church and on the thought of their country-
men through all these centuries, made the idea of the
Church so prominent in all their discussions, and
treated questions about its nature and constitution
as of vital importance to all who believe in Christ,
and to whom, therefore, His cause is dear. It was
their concern for the glory of Christ and for the
preserving inviolate all His prerogatives that made
them spend their strength and give their days to
the unwearied vindication of that conception of the
Church, in which alone, as they thought, Christ had
scope to exercise His rights as their Head, their King.

These men are often represented as mere ecclesi-
astics fighting for an ecclesiastical theory, bent only
on gaining a victory for Presbytery over Prelacy.
This is one of the shallowest of misconceptions. On
the part of those who repeat it, it is one of the
meanest and most inexcusable of misrepresentations.
The studies which these divines prosecuted were
Christological rather than ecclesiastical. When they
argued about the Church, it was in order to exalt Christ.
It is this that gives lasting interest and importance to
the writings of the Scottish theologians who thought,
wrote, and contended during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and during the first half of

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 3

the century following. Had they been mere eccle-
siastics, Donatists or anti-Donatists, ceremonialists
or anti-ceremonialists, controversialists contending
simply for Church theories, they would now have
not a historical, only an antiquarian interest. But
the central position which they gave to Christ in
their theology, and their splendid loyalty to Him
have kept that theology living for all ages, and ought to
keep it warm in the affections of all those who serve
and honour the same King and Master.

In the following lectures I propose to consider the
special doctrine in regard to the character and con-
stitution of Christ’s Church, as originally stated by
Knox and his coadjutors, afterwards elaborated and
more exactly defined by Rutherfurd, Gillespie, Brown
of Wamphray, Durham, Boston, and others of those
periods. I hope to be able to show that there is a
distinctive doctrine of the Church set forth and
vindicated by these men, accepted and acted upon
in the community which they represent; and that
the contribution they made to this subject is of such
a quality and of such extent as to deserve and reward
careful and separate consideration.

That this is so may appear, even before we have
entered upon the discussion, from the prominence
which many of the problems dealt with by them
have among us to-day, and from the help which their
enquiries and conclusions afford us in adjusting
questions which demand an answer from us at this
present time. How are we rightly to think of the

4 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

Church? Are we to conceive of it as an institute of
salvation, or as the communion of saints? What
constitutes membership in the Church, and who may
claim the right to her sealing ordinances? What is
the distinction between the Church visible and the
Church invisible, and how ought this distinction to be
stated? What constitutes the sin of schism, and
when is separation lawful and necessary? What is
the Church’s power of discipline? What is her right-
ful jurisdiction? How and when may she use her
power to excommunicate? What are the limits of a
legitimate, safe and wise toleration, and how can the
liberty of conscience be properly asserted and main-
tained? What is of Divine Right and what may be
imposed by human institution? Such are some of the
questions which will emerge as we proceed, and which
will mainly occupy our attention. All these questions
are asked and every possible answer is discussed in
present day theological writing, in great detail and
from every conceivable point of view.

In this introductory lecture I propose to look at
some general characteristics of the field in which our
enquiries are to be conducted. I shall ask you to
look at the books and at the men who wrote them—
their modes of thought, their manner of speech, what
in them repels their reader and what attracts him,
their intrinsic excellencies and their ineradicable de-
fects, what has to be borne with by the student of
their works, and what reward comes to him who
endures.

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 5

There is no doubt that the Scottish theological
writings of two or three hundred years ago are now
comparatively little known. Even divinity students
who may be fairly well read in Patristic literature
and in modern English and German theology are, in
many cases, unacquainted with the very names of the
works written by their forefathers. Students of our
vernacular literature, who are familiar with Gawin
Douglas, William Dunbar, Sir David Lyndsay, and
William Drummond of Hawthornden, know little or
nothing about Rutherfurd, Gillespie, Dickson, Baillie,
Durham, Brown, and Boston. To literary students
these last-named writers are not interesting because
of the subjects of which they treat. But even to
students of theology their writings have not proved
attractive, although their themes are such as should
have won for them attention and consideration. I
am not sure that it is excusable even for literary men
to neglect these writers as they have done. What-
ever their defects from a literary point of view may
be, I am inclined to think that their style of writing
and their mode of reasoning, their choice of subjects
and the vocabulary employed, are much more truly
characteristic of the age to which they belong, than
anything to be found in the more individual and
occasional productions of the poets and literateurs of
the same period. But the fact that not only those
who naturally have but little sympathy with the
religious character and contents of these books pass
them by, but that even those who are making these

6 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

same subjects their study almost wholly ignore them,
is a manifest proof that these writings are in some
respects seriously defective.

To any one who has ever handled the books, some of
these defects must be very apparent. Their general
make-up is unattractive, if not repulsive. If the
volumes are in their original bindings one is scarcely
tempted to open them; and even when it happens
that some lavish librarian has had them rebound in a
somewhat elegant style, it is only necessary to pass
within to find that all trace of elegance has vanished.
The coarse, dull, yellow paper, through which the
heavy type on the back of the page can almost be
read, making the reading of the page before us diffi-
_ cult; the dim, faded ink increasing the difficulty and
adding to the unpleasantness of the general effect, the
profuse and often meaningless employment of italic
printing, imparting to the whole a strange and for-
bidding look, marginal notes so crowded as to come
into immediate contact with the text, sometimes
allowed to cross over the whole page and cut the leaf
in two, even in the middle of a sentence—such draw-
backs as these, especially when they are all illustrated
in the one volume, do not certainly help to win
readers for it. This unattractiveness of printing,
paper, and binding is more or less characteristic of
all the publications of that age, whether printed by
and issued from the presses of London or Edinburgh,
of Leyden, Utrect, or Amsterdam.

When we pass from the get-up, over which perhaps

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 7

the writer had little control, and which was probably
the best that the skill of these days, or at least that
within reach, could afford—even after we have over-
come our aversion to bad paper, indistinct and
irregular printing, and such like defects, we immedi-
ately encounter other and more serious drawbacks of
style and manner and taste, in respect of which we find
these writers in almost all their books offending
against all the canons which are now recognised as
elementary principles of English composition. To say
that the language is archaic, that it seems to us often
grotesque and uncouth, is no more than to say that it
is the language of writers who lived two or three
hundred years ago. It would be absurd to call this a
fault, though it cannot but have its influence in de-
terring some from the study of these books.

A very real fault, however, and a very offensive
one is to be found in the lavish use of scriptural
phraseology which takes away from the works in
question the appearance of naturalness, and renders
them seemingly unreal, affected, and pedantic. I am
not for a moment forgetting that the phrases thus
borrowed, taken by themselves, are, in point of style,
out of all comparison superior to any which they
themselves could have contrived; but as dragged in
by them into their writings they are incongruous and
absurd, and often have meanings attached to them in
their new settings which neither the authors of them,
nor any sane commentator upon them ever thought
should be given them.

8 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

Samuel Rutherfurd is a great offender in this
particular. His use of the figurative and poetical
language of Scripture, and his accommodation of Old
Testament phrases to express Christian ideas in his
spiritual letters make these objectionable and even re-
pulsive to many. But if even in his correspondence
this practice of “the saint of the covenant” can
scarcely be excused, how much more offensive is it
in controversial writings and in the dedications and
prefaces of such works. To give but one example.
The dedication of his Dine Right of Church
Government and Kacommunication is addressed to
the Earl of Louden, Chancellor of Scotland, and a
covenanting nobleman. In this writing we have some
admirable and amiable sentiments expressed in this
constrained and objectionable way : “‘ Christ Jesus 7s a
uniting Saviour, one God, one Faith, one Lord Jesus,
one Religion should be, and I beseech the God of
Peace, they may be Chains of Gold to tie these two
Nations and Churches together in uno tertio, that they
may be concentered and united in one Lord Jesus.
O that that precious Dew of Hermon, that Showers of
Love and Peace may le all the mght upon the
Branches of the two Olive Trees, that the warmnesse,
heat, and influence of one Sun of Righteousnesse
with healing in las wings, may make the Lilly
amongst the Thorns, the Rose of Sharon, that is
planted by the Lord, the Spouse of Jesus Christ in
both Kingdoms to spred its Root, and cast its Smell,
as green and flourishing to all the Nations round

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 9

about. The Kingdom of God 1s Peace. The Lord is
about a great work in Britain, why should Divisions
that proceed from the lusts of men, and the enemies
of the Lord retard the wheels of the Chariot of
Christ? Let us not water the Lilly with blood again.
The Sons of Babel have shed our blood in great
abundance, for the which doth the Church of God in
the three Kingdoms stand and Pray and Prophecy
wm sackcloth. The violence done to me and to my
flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion
say: And my blood upon the Woman arrayed in
Purple and Scarlet, the Mother of Harlots and
Abominations of the Earth, shall Jerusalem say.
Happy we, if we could see the second Temple builded,
and the Lord repairing the old waste places, and the
Gentiles beholding the Righteousnesse of the Elder
Sister the Church of the Jews, and both as a Crown
of Glory in the hand of the Lord, and as a Royal
Diadem in the hand of our God.” !

Now it may be said that such writing is pictur-
esque, that there is in it a warmth of colour and a
depth of tone that impart to it a charm, or at least
render it interesting. And no doubt one who has
come to love Rutherfurd for the substance of his
writings, and especially for the heavenly spirit that
underlies the best of them, comes to think kindly
of the peculiar and fantastic language in which his
ideas are expressed. Admiration of the writer begets

1 [The capitals and italics, spelling and punctuation of the above
quotation are exactly reproduced from the original, published in 1646.]

10 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

what seems almost admiration of his phraseology.
And when we not only appreciate the thought, but
also love the thinker, we are inclined to resent any
suggestion that his conceptions might have been
presented in a more adequate and a more becoming
dress. But clearly this is prejudice—amiable, it may
be, yet all the same, or rather all the more, prejudice.

Looking calmly and dispassionately at the matter,
such language as we have quoted is a serious draw-
back in writings of any description, and especially
in those that undertake to discuss and give a careful
statement of doctrinal questions in which it is all
important that clear distinctions should be made and
accurate definitions should be given.

And so we may say that this is one of the charac-
teristics of our old Scottish theologians—this inter-
larding of their pages with Scripture quotations and
allusions, with passages and phrases of a pictorial
and poetical and metaphysical character—which is
calculated to repel even earnest-minded and patient
students of theology. It was, no doubt, a vice of the
age. We find it in the English Puritan divines, and
also in many of the old Anglicans, not only in
their sermons—where it might not be so much out
of place—but also in their most elaborate theological
treatises. We find it also to a considerable extent
in the writings of the Reformed theologians of that
period on the Continent. And this fault is largely
the occasion of that unfortunate oblivion into which
they all have fallen.

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 11

But in addition to such faults of form and style
which render these books unattractive, the whole
method of their writers is to most moderns well-nigh
intolerable. To call that method critical would be
seriously misleading. In an age in which criticism
is so highly esteemed, when commentaries on
Scripture that are to have any chance of being
looked at or referred to must at least be called
critical, we feel that the term could not be suitably
applied to our old Scottish writers. Their com-
mentaries on Scriptural books are not critical in the
sense of to-day. And yet all their works with which
we are to deal in these lectures are critical in the
sense of being directly and pertinaciously contro-
versial. It is criticism of an extraordinarily minute
and detailed description. Anyone who has had
occasion to go through the old Scottish books that
defend Presbyterianism will understand what I mean.
Principal Forrester’s Answers to Honeyman, Scott,
and Munro, and Gilbert Rule's Good Old Way
Defended, go over the works which they controvert
clause by clause, so that had these Erastian and
Prelatical writings been lost they might be repro-
duced in an almost complete form from the pages
of the vindicators of Presbytery.

But it is not only in works which are avowedly
controversial, and which let it be known in their
very titles that the positions and argumentations
of particular writers are to be demolished that this
method is pursued. It is more or less characteristic

12 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

of all the theological literature of that age. There
is a way of being intensely polemical without en-
cumbering the text with the names of opponents
and with quotations from their writings. I have in
view_a notable example of this in Hofmann’s Com-
mentary on Ephesians. The text contains nothing
but the positive statement of Hofmann’s own views;
but on page after page you have foot-notes, three
or four—gegen Harless, gegen Riickert, gegen Meyer,
gegen Olshausen, gegen De Wette, ete. If only it
had occurred to our national theologians to do this,
or if it had been possible for them do this, then
to-day, I verily believe, for every one who reads
them they would have had ten readers. But this
was not possible. It would have been altogether con-
trary to their peculiar genius simply to state their
own view and merely indicate by a preposition in a
note that this was antagonistic to the view of some
opponent. For in their estimation this opponent's
view was pestilential, and they must tell you so, and
hold up the objectionable and detestable proposition
before you till you see, not only it, but also all
the possible enormities of an intellectual, moral and
spiritual kind that lie behind and are involved in it.
Now, it cannot be denied that this makes these books
often weary reading and not very profitable. There is
an immense expenditure of subtle reasoning, of elaborate
and ingenious arguing. You admire the cleverness
and pertinacity of the controversialist. But the
pursuit of the enemy seems endless. No sooner is

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 13

one objection disposed of than another, which to
an ordinary reader has the appearance of being very
much the same, is stated, characterised and confuted.

These writers would have consulted the comfort of .

their readers very much more if they had only taken
the trouble beforehand to determine what were the
main principles of their opponents’ positions and dealt
with these on broad and comprehensive lines.

To mention just one more defect which renders our
sixteenth and seventeen century theologians unpopular
with students of the present day, we find that their
use of Scripture and their principles of Scripture
interpretation are often such as we cannot accept.
Mere analogies, more or less disputable, are boldly
used as arguments; Old Testament characters and
institutions are freely allegorised, the structure of the
ark, the pins of the tabernacle, the garments of
Aaron are spiritualised; and our authors deal with
the record of these things just as if they had been
discussing New Testament statements of evangelical
doctrine. Origen and even Phile, as allegorists, are
not a bit more extravagant. This persistent exercise
of a false ingenuity in turning to spiritual uses the
least spiritual parts of Scripture results from an
erroneous conception of the authority of the Divine
Word according to which these divines felt themselves
obliged to treat with the same reverence all kinds of
statements occurring in the Sacred books. In his
Divine Right of Church Government and Excom-
munication, Rutherfurd lays down the position that

14 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

“there is nothing so small in either Doctrinals or
Polocie, so as men may alter, omit, and leave off
these smallest Positive things that God hath com-
manded.” + But surely he commits himself to a quite
needlessly extreme position when he says “I am;
obliged to receive this as Scripture, that Paul left his
cloak at Troas; no lesse than this, Christ came into
the world to save sinners, in regard of Canonicall
authority stamped upon both.”? But supposing it
were discovered that Paul had made some mistake
about the fortunes of that cloak. Supposing some
clear evidence were forthcoming to show that he had
left it in some other place, or that it had afterwards
turned up in some corner of his luggage where it had
been overlooked, surely no serious student of the New
Testament would pass a sleepless night in consequence
of that discovery. How different would the case be
were it proved that he had no ground for his other
statement as to Christ coming into the world to save
sinners! To put the two statements on anything
like the same level is sheer nonsense, if one may be
excused speaking so irreverently of any utterance by
such a man as Samuel Rutherfurd. What precisely
the theory of inspiration is which underlies the state-
ment appears from this, that in the immediate context
the author condemns Cornelius a Lapide for admitting,
as he does in his note on 2 Tim. ii. 16, degrees of
inspiration as seen in the Law and the Prophets on
the one hand, and in the Histories and moral ex-

1 [Introduction, Sect. ii. p. 19.] 2 [Itid, Sect. iv. p. 64]

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 15

hortations on the other, while he quotes with approval
the note of Estius on that verse to the effect that
“‘the Scriptures are given by divine inspiration, so as
not only the sentences, but every word, and the order
and disposition of words is of, or from God, as if he
were speaking and writing himself.”

In perfect keeping with this doctrine of the verbal
inspiration of Scripture, stated in the most rigid and
most uncompromising form conceivable, is the position
maintained in the same treatise, without qualification
or reserve, as a ruling canon of interpretation that for
God not to command is to forbid.? This is explicitly
stated in the discussion of the question, “ Whether or
not Humane Ceremonies in God’s Worship can consist
with the perfection of God’s Word?” Rutherfurd’s
first argument is that every positive religious obser-
vance and rite in divine worship not warranted by
God’s word is unlawful. On this point there are
some six pages of extremely smart and clever writing,
but it must be confessed that a great deal of it is
quite irrelevant. The Scottish disputant “for the
perfection of the holy Scripture in point of Ceremonies
and Church Government” quotes God’s words to
Jeremiah with reference to the sacrifices on the high
places of Tophet, “which I commanded not, neither
came it into my heart,” as if they meant simply, I
gave no commandment enjoining such human sacri-

1 [Introduction, Sect. iv. p. 65.]

2 [The Lord Commanded not this, Ergo, It is not Lawfull, Ibid.,
chap. i. p. 95.]

3 (Jeremiah, chap. vii. 31.]

16 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

fices. What he wants to make out is that the absence
of a command is equivalent to a prohibition. But
clearly the passages he quotes do not bear out his
contention. There can be no question that those who
were in favour of the ceremonies, such as Hooker,
Morton, Burgess and Field, here scored a point against
their antagonist. They were in this particular more
correct in their exegesis when they interpreted “I
commanded not” as meaning, | discommanded, or
forbade ; such worship is in direct conflict with the
spirit of my legislation.

An extreme position like that assumed by Ruther-
furd is not required by the exigencies of his argument.
All that he needed to show was that certain of those

_ ceremonies were regarded by him and by those who
thought with him as involving the affirmation or
approval of principles which are contradictory to the
will of God as revealed in His Word. He does this,
indeed, very abundantly throughout his writings.
He shows that compliance with these ceremonies would
mean for him idolatry, and that even those who
vindicated their use and saw no idolatrous element in
them admitted that they were not of divine authority.
He was, therefore, quite entitled to maintain that it
was inexpedient to demand uniformity in the obsery-
ance of them, as though without them divine worship
would not be complete. To such an argument there

,is no answer. But Rutherfurd, and Gillespie, and

ene of that school thought to make their position
stronger by insisting that every act and observance

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 17

jand ceremony of worship must have direct and ex-
plicit scriptural sanction in the form of an express
‘divine command. It must be perfectly evident now
to every one how seriously such a position hampers a
Church in its conduct of public worship. It leaves no
room for modification of any kind, such as may be
demanded by the peculiarities of national character,
prevailing racial distinctions, and special aspects of
thought distinguishing particular ages. If rigidly
carried out it would require that every feature of the
worship of the Apostolical Age should be copied with-
out addition and without omission even of the simplest
detail. Quite a number of practices current and un-
questioned in the services of the most conservative
and primitive of congregations and denominations
would be abandoned under this rule, as prohibited
because not expressly commanded.

I have given this as a specimen of those extrava-
gances which make the writings of our old divines
unpalatable to modern readers. Hven where the
conclusions reached may be such as to command our
approval and assent, we are irritated by the employ-
ment of arguments which involve more than the
problem in hand requires, and imply assumptions that
are utterly untenable.

In saying all this, however, I do not mean seriously
to find fault with the theologians of a bygone day, but
simply to show what defects in their books create a
prejudice against them and hinder modern students

from giving them that thoughtful and painstaking
B

18 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

attention which they deserve, and which they would
abundantly reward.

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the Scottish
theological literature of the seventeenth century and
the first half of the eighteenth—from the period of the
Second Reformation to that of the Secession Fathers
—forms a contribution to theological science of first-
rate importance, rich in its teaching with regard to
questions that must interest and engage the attention
of thinking men in all ages. There is a large amount
of ignorance prevailing with reference to the matters
which occupied the thoughts of our forefathers, and
were the subjects of their apologies and attacks.
Popular writers, and even others of whom better
might have been expected, have given currency to the
“most extraordinary stories about the discussions in
which these men delighted, and the language in which
they were accustomed to express their thoughts. Un-
sympathetic historians of the period, or dilletanti
reviewers and literateurs have often made allusion to
the works in question in the flippant, superficial way
in which Gibbon referred to the Nicene contro-
versialists. Men like Mr Buckle, who entertained a
fanatical hatred toward Christianity, are not only
incapable of appreciating the character of Scottish
theological thinkers, but have unfitted themselves by
their prejudices from expressing any rational judg-
ment on the matters which these men, by reason of
the age in which they lived, were forced to face.
There are not wanting, indeed, liberal and open-

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 19

minded men, who, though their own religious views
may be as far as possible opposed to those of our
reforming and covenanting fathers, yet recognise in
their doings and in their writings the achievements of
heroic souls, and of highly-endowed, richly-cultured
scholars. It seems, however, to be very generally
believed that the theologians of Scotland were men
of narrow and sectarian interests, that they had no
vision for anything outside of the most rigidly drawn
lines of a doctrinal system which they had received
by tradition from their fathers, that they were, there-
fore, devoid of all originality, that their books are full
of wearisome reiteration of theological commonplaces,
and that their commentaries on Scripture are simply
pages torn from their dogmatics and set down under
Seripture texts. If we were to take the word of cer-
tain popular writers for it, we would assume that
these men were ignorant fanatics, without culture,
men who had never been outside their own parishes,
provincial in language and in thought, whose preju-
dices were inveterate, and who went through the form
of an argument simply for appearance sake before
setting down a conclusion transmitted to them, which
no reasoning whatever would make them alter or
modify.

To those who have really read the writings thus
sweepingly condemned, and not merely books that
have been written about them, such descriptions must
seem exceedingly strange. Minute questions are, no
doubt, laboriously discussed ; but this is not done in

20 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

the interests of these small points. The minutiz
with which they deal are not dealt with as an end in
themselves or for their own sakes. If a minute point
is settled after a careful and searching investigation,
it is in order that the conclusion may be laid up as a
contribution toward the settlement of some wider and
more comprehensive question. The subjects which
they discussed in their works were generally themes
of supreme importance to men as men. The great
historical controversies in which they took so distin-
guished a part turned upon matters of undying
interest to the human race. As for the men them-
selves, they did indeed, all of them, bear the impress
of their age. If they had not they would be of little
value, and their works would not only be forgotten,
~ but would well deserve to be so. If Rutherfurd’s
writings did not reflect the special religious condition
of the middle of the seventeenth century, if those of
Boston did not reveal the influence of the spiritual
atmosphere of a period some two generations later,
they would not belong to Scottish theology, they
would only be isolated productions of individual
thinkers.

The writers to whom we here refer were in a
peculiarly favourable position for dealing with those
great doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions on which
they thought so deeply and wrote so largely. They
had a distinct advantage over the early Reformers and
over the men of the Church of the Revolution. Two
circumstances contributed to confer this advantage

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 21

upon them—the period in which they lived, and the
splendid scholarship which they had acquired.

As for the times, it was a distinct advantage that
these men lived in that particular age. Certain great
doctrinal controversies and certain important ecclesias-
tical developments had given prominence to particular
theological problems, and had shed a bright light upon
them. Circumstances nationa] and social had then
brought the discussion of the nature and authority of
the Church of God to the front. It had become an
imperative duty on the part of all thinking and cap-
able men that they should give their strength to the
examination of the principles which underly the most
serious questions of civil and sacred polity. They
were under obligation from the very necessities of
their time, to seek out and give forth the best answers
possible to enquiries as to what the civil magistrate
may, and what he may not, enjoin, in what he is to
be obeyed, and in what obedience to him must be re-
fused, what the doctrines are which the Church is to
receive, and what those views and notions are which
she must reject, what the authority is to which the
Church must submit, and how that authority is to
be expressed. Hence we have not only elaborate
treatises on Church Government, but also systematic
treatises on certain doctrines. The doctrines of Pro-
vidence, Sin, the Person of Christ, the Atonement,
the ever-recurring problem as to the border line of
philosophy and theology, about Liberty and Neces-
sity, the question of the extent of Redemption, and

22, THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

such like truly and profoundly religious matters, were
debated, sometimes scholastically, sometimes practi-
cally, but always seriously, and with a solemn sense
of their difficulty and of the responsibility that
attached to their discussion. The Word of God,
the sin of man, the work of Christ, conversion and
regeneration, the means of grace, the hope of glory—
these are the great themes on which our Scottish
divines had something fresh to say, some original
contribution to make.

In their theological studies they had the benefit of
the discussions which had been carried on among
continental theologians in Holland and France, by
Arminians and Socinians, and their orthodox op-
ponents. Nor were these merely academic disputes
on subjects devoid of practical value and general
importance. They bore upon matters which con-
cerned the living and burning questions of that day.
The principal points in these controversies were still
subjects of vital interest, calling for further investiga-
tion in the elucidation of many minute but not
unessential particulars.

At this time also there had arisen, both in the
countries of the Continental Reformation and in
England, a serious practical trouble to the Church
from the appearing of sectaries — Antinomians,
Familists, Anabaptists of various types—whose
fantastic theories, some of them morally pestilential,
others of them unsettling and anarchical, had secured
in certain districts a widespread currency, and had

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 23

won, over a certain class of minds, a wonderful
fascination. These had to be answered, and the
answering of them gave an opportunity for dealing
with many of the fundamental principles of Scripture
interpretation and doctrinal construction, the disre-
garding of which had given occasion to some of the
most preposterous caricatures of Christianity which
its worst enemy could have desired. And thus the
age supplied these theologians with abundant materials
in the form of heresies, both of a doctrinal and of
an ethical kind, torefute which they buckled on their
armour and fought with a will, and they persisted in the
struggle until their opponents were not only overthrown
but annihilated. Indeed their vigour in controversy
was so great that sometimes, fearing lest those whom
they had laid low might yet have breath left in them,
they returned to the fray, and were guilty of the folly
of performing works of supererogation by slaying over
again those they had already slain. It was a con-
troversial age, and it called forth a race of contro-
versialists. Protestantism in Scotland was not yet a
century old. Not more than one generation had
passed away since the Presbyterian polity of the
Church of Scotland had been formulated in the Second
Book of Discipline. The history of Calvinism had not
reached further than its third or fourth generation.
The foes of Protestantism, Presbyterianism, and Cal-
vinism had not yet given up hope of winning back
the Church and the people of Scotland. Romanists
and Prelatists, Socinians and Arminians were in the

24 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

field. LHcclesiastically Scotland was in a state of siege.
The circumstances of the age, therefore, favoured and
required the minute study of all the salient points in
the Church’s creed, and of the principles which lay
at the root of the constitution of the Church itself.
Church questions were pre-eminently the questions of
the day.

And in the providence of God there was a goodly
number of men singularly well-qualified by intellectual
endowment and scholarly attainments to enter the
lists against all comers, and to fight on their own
field the accredited champions of the opposing parties.
It would lead us much too far from our proper subject
were we to attempt to enumerate all the distinguished
scholars who made the name of Scotland honourable

in the most eminent seats of learning throughout the
entire continent of Hurope.

In Paris, Sedan and Saumur, in Leyden, Frankfort
and Utrecht, and in many other famous universities,
Scotsmen had long been occupying chairs of philo-
sophy, classics and divinity, and making the seminaries
in which they taught renowned.

Of the older men we only name Alesius, Major,
Boece, Buchanan, Melville. Of the later generation
we mention only two, whose contributions to the
doctrine of the Church bring their works within the
scope of the present course of lectures—Robert Boyd
of Trochrig, who was for seven years professor at
Saumur, with a reputation in all the universities of
France, and Samuel Rutherfurd, who on two occasions

1TS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 25

at least was invited to occupy chairs in the universities
of Holland. But other Scottish theologians as well as
these were known far and wide for profound scholarship,
brilliant dialectic and warm evangelical piety—George
Gillespie, James Durham, John Brown of Wamphray,
Robert M‘Ward, and Thomas Boston. For an in-
imitable description of these and most of the other
great men of this period and of later periods in the
Scottish Church, I refer once for all to Dr James
Walker’s first Cunningham Lecture. Nowhere else
shall we find so brilliant, so informing, so complete an
account of our leading Scottish theologians and their
works—a rapid sketch but by a master’s hand, by
a conscientious student who had patiently and
sympathetically read all the literature that he passed
under review.

All these men whom we have named and many of
their fellow labourers were eminently qualified by
natural ability and splendid scholarship for the task
of expounding the principles of their ecclesiastical
polity and of defending the crown rights of the
Redeemer as Head and King of the Church. We
cannot do more in what remains of this lecture than
indicate the character and contents of the principal
writings with which in the following discussion we
shall mainly have to do.

An interesting volume might be written on the

1 [The Theology and Theologians of Scotland chiefly of the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries. Being the Cunningham Lectures for 1870-71.
By James Walker, D.D., Carnwath. Edin., T. & T. Clark, 1872.]

26 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

literary life and scientific work in all the various
departments of theology of Scottish divines during
the period of that century and a half to which we -
have referred. But we must limit our view to the
writers and writings which deal with questions
immediately affecting the doctrine of the Church.

We may conveniently group by themselves three
great men, Boyd, Cameron, and Baillie, who have
several things in common. All three were born in
Glasgow, all occupied the position of teachers in the
University of Glasgow, and all of them wrote works
of the utmost importance in connection with the
subjects which will come before us in this course of
lectures.

The first of these works to which we refer is the
~voluminous Commentary on the Epistle to the
Ephesians by Robert Boyd. This great scholar was
born in Glasgow in 1578. His father, who died
when Robert was only three years old, was the pro-
prietor of Trochrig and other Ayrshire estates. In
accordance with the compromise in regard to Church
government agreed upon at the Convention of Leith
in 1572, he had been appointed first Protestant
Archbishop of Glasgow. Though one of the Tulchan
prelates, James Boyd was universally respected for his
integrity and moderation, and was the only one of his
order who ever enjoyed the honour of being chosen
Moderator of the General Assembly. On the Arch-
bishop’s death his widow withdrew to the ancestral
estate, two miles from the town of Girvan, and in due

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 27

time Robert and his elder brother were sent to the
Grammar School at Ayr. It would seem that the
Rector of this school influenced his pupil in favour of
Presbyterianism, and young Boyd’s predilections in
that direction were confirmed by the famous Principal
Rollock, under whom he studied in the University of
Edinburgh. After taking his Master's degree he
passed through a course of divinity. When in 1599
he went to France he was immediately recognised by
the Protestant divimes of that country as a learned
and pious theologian, and although only about twenty-
one years of age he was appointed professor of philo-
sophy at Montauban. After serving in this capacity
for some five years he removed to a little country
town as pastor of the Protestant congregation. In
1606 he was elected professor of divinity at Saumur.
Besides teaching in the University he ministered to
the Reformed Church of France in that town. His
command of the French language was perfect and
his preaching in that tongue was greatly admired.
Previous to this he had been carefully training him-
self for his life work as a theologian. Sparing of
sleep, testifies his biographer, Andrew Rivet, he
devoted his nights to the study of divinity. The
influence of Rollock was seen both in his popular
expositions of Scripture to his congregation and in the
direction of his private studies in theological science.
King James VI., anxious to be recognised as the
patron of scholars, kept an eye upon those Scotsmen
whose learning had made them famous in foreign

28 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

lands. He could not fail to hear of Robert Boyd, for
France was ringing with his fame. He sent therefore
in 1615 an urgent invitation to his countryman to
return and assume the principalship of Glasgow
University. His elder brother having died, Robert
Boyd was now laird of Trochrig, and he had been
strongly urged to return to Scotland in order to look
after the family property. Much as he loved France,
where he had been happy and useful, and contrary to
the natural wish of his French wife that he should
dwell among her own people, he yielded to the King’s
importunity.

It is interesting to notice that his cousin Zachary
Boyd, the quaint sacred poet, some years younger
than himself, was also distinguished as a scholar, and

that a few years later he occupied a position as

professor in the same college of Saumur, and came to
Glasgow, during his cousin’s principalship, as minister
of the Barony parish. Along with the office in the
University went the position of minister of Govan.
For six or seven years Robert Boyd laboured faith-
fully in Glasgow as principal and parish minister.
But his Calvinistic doctrine and Presbyterian polity,
and especially his determined opposition to the Five
Articles of Perth, roused against him the ill-will of the
Prelatical party. Nor was the work required of him
altogether to his mind. ‘The bairns” angered him.
Many went to college at the age of twelve years—
Boyd himself matriculated in Edinburgh at that age
—and many were rude and boisterous. And so in

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 29

1621 he resigned his office and retired to his country
house. After a year and a half he was appointed by
the Edinburgh authorities to the principalship of their
University and to a city charge; but in a few months’
time, by the King’s imperious command, the Town
Council, sorely against their will and only after being
threatened with the severest penalties in case of refusal
or delay, dispensed with the services of one whose
preaching had filled the church and whose name would
have shed fresh lustre on their seat of learning.
Another short period of retirement was followed by
his appointment to the Abbey Church of Paisley, but
from this he was almost immediately driven by a
Popish faction. He then withdrew finally to Trochrig.
Falling sick and going for medical treatment he died
in Edinburgh on the 5th of January 1627.

First in Saumur and afterwards in Glasgow Boyd
delivered to his students over two hundred Latin
lectures on the Epistle to the Ephesians. He lectured
twice a week, devoting an hour and a half to each
lecture. These were published posthumously in 1652
in a large folio volume, with two columns to the page,
and 1236 pages in the book. Dr Walker calculates that
there is more in the work than in the four quarto
tomes of Turretine. For the information of those who
are not students and may not know much about
Turretine, I may best indicate its size by saying it
contains about one and a quarter million words. Yet
it is not verbose or spun out. The style is terse and
condensed. The mistake consists in putting into the

30 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

commentary so much material. The author wished to
draw his theology from the fountain of Holy Scripture,
and so he gave his system of theology in the form of an
exposition of a particular New Testament book. If we
accept the work as it was expressly intended by the
author, as a register of his learning and teaching in theo-
logy which he chose to put in this form rather than
spread them over half a dozen volumes of doctrinal and
historical contents, we may allow that we have by no
means too much of it. On its ample title-page it is de-
scribed as giving, in addition to an accurate analysis,
and a copious and clear explication of the apostolic
doctrine, and an apposite and practical statement of
the doctrines, discussions dispersed here and there on
the Loci Communes, questions and controversies, and
also a large number of texts of Holy Scripture for
proof or explanation. Quotations are made from two
hundred and twenty-one authors. The author illus-
trates his meaning and adorns his pages by references
to all the great classical writers of Greece and Rome,
poets, orators, philosophers, historians, and not only
to these works commonly read but to many more
which are known now even by their writers’ names to
very few. He quotes largely from all the Christian
Fathers, most frequently from Augustine, Chrysostom,
Gregory Nazianzen. He uses freely the Schoha
Graeca, is at home among the schoolmen from Aquinas
to Biel, and quotes from Cardinal Bellarmine as
often as from St Bernard. Of Scottish writers he
makes use of Buchanan, Melville, Rollock, William

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 31

Scott of Elie, and Josias Welch; and of English
authors Bede, Perkins and Whittaker, while he refers
to George Wishart, the martyr, under the designation
of Georgius Sophocardius. In this great theological
work we have an elaborate excursus of eighty pages on
Predestination ; and as we might expect, very full and
learned notes on the Head of the Church and its
members, by way of exposition of the classical passage
in the Ephesian Epistle which deals with these
subjects. | Boyd’s lectures were not read from a
manuscript, but were recited with perfect fluency, even
Greek quotations, except the longer ones from Chry-
sostom, being given without any reference to the
printed or written page.

And this great man, whose magnificent scholarship
was everywhere recognised, in some wonderful way
managed, in his short life of forty-nine years, to
acquire and assimilate learning in almost every field
in the wide domain of theology, though he was
harassed and driven from place to place by those who
ought to have been his patrons and his friends.

The next book of which we wish to say something
is one even less known to readers of the present day
—if that be possible—than Boyd’s Commentary.
Three large volumes in Latin, containing over thirteen
hundred pages, present to us what remains of the
Prelectiones of John Cameron, a vigorous thinker and
a profound theologian, whose name has fallen into
quite undeserved obscurity. He was born about 1579,
studied in the University of his native city, Glasgow,

32 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

and, having finished his arts course, went over to
France, where he taught classics and philosophy.
Having gone through his divinity curriculum in one
of the French colleges he served the French Protestant
Church for ten years as pastor at Bordeaux. In 1618
he became a professor of theology at Saumur, and
the singular greatness of the man is seen from the im-
pression that he made on the minds and lives of such
greatly gifted scholars as Amyraldus, Capellus, and
Placzeus, who as teachers at the college at which they
were trained made that seminary one of the most
famous in Europe. They all warmly owned their
obligations to Cameron and acknowledged that his
teaching mainly made them the men they were after-
wards found to be. He had taught a modified Calvinism,
which his disciples developed and which is known now
in theology under the name of Amyraldism.! He lived
in troublous times and owing to certain commotions
in France he returned to Scotland and was appointed
Principal of Glasgow University in 1622, after Boyd
had been driven to resign. Cameron did not find
himself in congenial quarters in the city of his birth.
He was out of sympathy with the leaders of the
Scottish Church of that time, and so, after holding
office for a year, he withdrew again to France. In
consequence of his views in regard to submission to
rulers and passive obedience he became obnoxious to

1 [From Moses Amyraut or Amyraldus, d. 1664. See Bayle, Diction-
naire, tome i. art. Amyraut. For statement of Amyraldism see Cunn-
ingham’s Historical Theology, vol. ii. pp. 329, 364 ; Hodge’s Systematic
Theology, vol. ii. pp. 205 f., 322.]

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 33

the populace of Montauban, where he now taught, and
as the result of injuries which he received from a
violent mob, he died in 1625 in his forty-sixth
year.

The whole of the first volume of Cameron’s published
lectures treat De Ecclesia, and we shall find much in
it of first rate importance on the nature, visibility and
power of the Church, on schism, and on scandal. In
order to give an example of the literary style and
gracious spirit of the man, it may be well just here to
quote the closing sentence of a very rare treatise on
the Romish controversy, written in French and trans-
lated into English. ‘It sufficeth me that my con-
science leaveth me witness that I have proceeded in
it without vain glory, in all sincerity, as speaking
rather before God than before men. This maketh me
hope for His blessing upon my pains, so much the
more as He is jealous of His truth, at the clearing of
which I have wholly aimed. Therefore | humbly
entreat Him by His Spirit to supply all my defects
and, notwithstanding my infirmities, not to fail to
accomplish His power by weak means, whether it be
in confirming those whom He hath already called to
the communion of His grace, or whether it be in
awakening others out of their security, to the end
that they may seek His truth, and in seeking it may
find it, and in it everlasting life, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, to whom with the Father and the Holy
Spirit, be honour and glory eternally. Amen.!

[2 Examination of Romish Church Doctrines, 1626.]
Cc

34 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

The third of the Glasgow worthies is Robert Baillie ;
and his writings which will chiefly help us in our
present investigation are: A Dissuasiwe from the
Errors of the Time, in two parts directed mainly
against the Independents and Sectaries ; An Historical
Vindication of the Government of the Church of Scot-
land, and A Review of Doctor Bramble | Bramhall]
lis Farr Warning against the Scotish Discupline.

Robert Baillie was born in the Saltmarket of
Glasgow on the 30th of April 1602. His early
education at school and college in Glasgow was con-
ducted under the influence of Robert Blair, first
schoolmaster, then regent of the University. Baillie
graduated in 1620 and immediately thereafter pro-
ceeded to study divinity under Robert Boyd. When
the ponderous work on the Epistle to the Ephesians,
of which we have already spoken, was published in
1652, Baillie wrote an account of Boyd’s academic
labours by way of preface to the volume. Although
thirty years had then gone by since he sat in Boyd’s
classroom he retained a lively recollection of the
power and attractiveness of his professor's lectures.
He tells how large numbers of learned men and
zealous students flocked to hear the prelections of the
master.

Baillie was also a student under Cameron, the
successor of Boyd in the principalship. For this
great scholar and divine, though his residence in
Glasgow was scarcely of one year’s duration, the
young divinity student had a profound respect.

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 35

Cameron’s ecclesiastical views exercised a powerful
influence upon his pupil, whose own inclinations were
very much in the same direction. During this period
Baillie was decidedly in favour of a modified or
limited Episcopacy. But while these were his views,
he was not called during the time he was regent in
Glasgow University from 1625 to 1631, nor during
his subsequent residence in Kilwinning, as parish
minister, to subscribe to any engagement or to practise
any of the objectionable ceremonies.

In 1643 Baillie was removed from his country
charge to be Professor of Divinity in Glasgow Uni-
versity ; but before the close of that year he was in
London as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the
Westminster Assembly. He did not actually enter
upon his professional duties till after his return to
Scotland in 1646. During his residence in London
Baillie wrote and published his well-known Dissuasive
from the Errors of the Time, in which he deals with
the Brownists, the Independents of New England and
Holland, as also the English Independents. In this
work there are chapters of special interest to us in
our present inquiry, chapters in which Baillie urges
against the Independents that it is unjust scrupulosity
to require satisfaction of the true grace of every church
member. Shortly after the publication of the Dis-
suasive Baillie turned his attention to a scurrilous
and bitter tract by John Maxwell, formerly Bishop
of Ross, in which that excommunicate of the Pres-
bytery, who had been declared an incendiary by the

36 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

Parliament, sought to show that the Presbyterian
government is inconsistent with monarchy.

Professor Grub describes Maxwell as the greatest
Scottish prelate of the reign of Charles I., as a man
of eminent ability, whose rectitude of conduct and
dignity and consistency of character have never been
sufficiently acknowledged. It does not seem that as
a churchman or as a writer he deserves to be held
in honourable remembrance. The two tracts which
he is known to have issued are poor productions, dis-
tinguished only by their violent language and reckless,
unprincipled misstatements, and by the fact that one
called forth Samuel Rutherfurd’s great work Lea Rew,
and the other Baillie’s Historical Vindication of the
Government of the Church of Scotland. Maxwell's
pamphlet bears the long title, informing us of its
scope and contents: Zhe Burden of Issachar, or the
Tyranmcal Power and Practices of the Presbyterian
Government in Scotland in their Parochial Session,
Presbytery, Provincial Synod, and General Assembly.
Baillie shows in detail how calumnious and false Max-
well’s description of the practices of presbyterianism
is, and particularly vindicates the memories of such
men as Knox, Welsh, Melville, and Robert Bruce
from the charge of rude treatment of their prince.
Of special interest to us is the statement and historical
proof that discipline had never been exercised in an
inquisitorial and offensive fashion in the Scottish
Presbyterian Church, and that the passing of a sent-
ence of excommunication was an event that might

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 37

not happen once in a whole generation. In 1649
Dr Bramhall, Bishop of Londonderry, published in
Holland an extremely violent pamphlet, maintaining
the same contention as Maxwell’s pamphlet, entitled,
A Faire Warning to take heed of the Scotish Dis-
cypline, as being of all others most Injurious to the
Cwil Magistrate, most Oppressive to the Subject,
most Pernicious to both. The title indicates the
contents and the spirit of the tract. The author
concludes by suggesting that the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland has the attributes of Anti-
christ as much as the Pope or the Turk. Its members
sit in the temple of God and advance themselves above
those whom Holy Scripture calls gods. In the same
year Baillie issued A Review of the Warning, in which
he undertook to refute fully and convincingly the pre-
late’s “‘malicious and most lying reports” which
have been “ to the great scandall of that [presbyterian]
Government.” He shows the real disloyalty and
seditious character of the episcopal warner, who seeks
to secure the privileges and position of the prelates
at the risk of the overthrow of prince and people.
Chapter by chapter he follows the accusations of the
pamphleteer, and shows him to be ignorant and guilty
of such wilful exaggerations and misstatements as are
nothing short of malicious lying. It is one of the
cleverest of Baillie’s writings. To those who are in-
clined to suppose that the presbyterian writers were
vulgar and uncouth in style, and the prelatists refined,
cultured and dignified I commend a comparison of

38 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

these two moderately brief papers by Bramhall and
Baillie.

After the Restoration, Patrick Gillespie, the restless
ambitious intriguer, who held office during the Com-
monwealth period as Principal of Glasgow University,
having been expelled, Robert Baillie, the quiet
orderly peace-loving Resolutioner, was promoted to that —
academic dignity. But though ready to make any per-
sonal sacrifice in the interest of peace, Baillie was a man
of strong convictions, and was in heart and life a
thorough going presbyterian. So when one disaster
after another fell upon the Church, and one difficulty
after another in the management of the College pressed
upon him, his bodily strength gave way, and he died
in the autumn of 1662, before completing the second
year of his principalship.

Next in order we may refer to the works of two
great men who were associated with Baillie as mem-
bers of the Westminster Assembly—George Gillespie
and Samuel Rutherfurd. The works of both these
men are for our purpose of the utmost importance in
their bearing upon almost every question connected
with the doctrine of the Church.

George Gillespie was born in the beginning of the
year 1613, at Kirkcaldy, where his father was
minister, and he was educated at the University of
St Andrews. Before his ordination, which was
delayed in consequence of the troubles of the time, he
published his first work: A dispute against the
English Popish Ceremonies obtruded on the Church of

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 39

Scotland. This valuable treatise appeared in 1687,
when the author was in his twenty-fourth year. In
it he discusses, in a wonderfully calm and orderly
manner, the necessity, the expediency, the lawfulness
and the indifference of the ceremonies. This is, per-
haps, the greatest, most compact, most comprehensive
work extant on the prelatical controversy. In 1638
Gillespie was ordained minister of Wemyss in Fife,
and four years later he was translated to Edinburgh
and became one of the city ministers. He accompanied
Baillie, Henderson and Rutherfurd to London as a
Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly in 1648,
and although by many years younger than any of his
fellow commissioners, he was able easily to take his
place alongside of the best of them. During his
residence in London, and as the outcome of his special
studies in connection with controversies in the
Assembly, he published his great anti-erastian treatise
entitled, Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, a noble work, with
a most absurd title, on Jewish Church Government,
Christian Church Government, and Excommunication.
It is distinctly the most complete and thorough con-
futation in our language, perhaps in any language, of
the Erastian theory. The distinction between civil
and ecclesiastical government, and all conceivable
questions as to excommunication and suspension from
Church privileges are fully debated and discussed
from Scripture, from Jewish and Christian antiquities,
from the consent of later writers, from the idea of the
true nature and rights of magistracy, and from the

40 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

groundlessness of the chief objections made against
the presbyterial government, as a domineering,
arbitrary, unlimited power. It was published in 1646,
in a large volume of nearly six hundred pages. We
shall have occasion to use it largely in some of the
following lectures.

Besides Prelatists and Erastians, the Independents
also occupied the attention of George Gillespie, and
against them he defended presbyterianism in his
Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scot-
land. In this polemic, published in 1641, we have
a singularly clear and methodical defence of the
ruling eldership and of the authority of Presbyteries
and Synods. The One Hundred and Eleven Pro-
positions concerning the Minstry and Government
of the Church give in short compass the main points
in regard to Church polity which were subjects of
controversy in that age. The twenty-two chapters of
Miscellany Questions, issued as a posthumous work in
1649 under the editorship of his brother Patrick,
besides discussing some of the points in Aaron’s Rod,
deal with several matters of permanent, practical
importance. One other tract of this Westminster
divine entitled Wholesome Severity reconciled with
Christian Inberty we may have to consider when we
come to deal with the views of Scottish theologians on
liberty of conscience.

The breadth of scholarship shown in these works is
very remarkable. Besides the special literature of his
subject, with which he was naturally familiar, we find

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 41

that for purposes of occasional illustration, Gillespie
had at his command the whole range of classical Greek
and Latin literature, as well as that of the early
Fathers, the medizeval writers, the Reformers, and
later theologians. He quotes from Augustine, Hilary,
Theophylact, Osiander, Davenant, and almost all the
leading divines of all ages and of all schools. And be
it remembered that all this theological literature was
not read up for the occasion, but belonged in a legiti-
mate way to the stores of his great learning. He died
before he had completed his thirty-sixth year. Had
it been given him, and had not the exigencies of the
age bound him to one particular branch of doctrine,
he was evidently well qualified to contribute to
general theological literature, as an expositor, a sys-
tematic theologian, and a historian. He was a man
of peace, and no intriguer, like his brother Patrick,
with whom he is sometimes confounded. Though
almost everything he wrote was controversial, there is
a commendable absence of bitterness from his writ-
ings. Yet the unanswerable acuteness and soundness
of his reasoning proved more irritating to his enemies
than vulgar abuse would have been. And so Middle-
ton’s drunken parliament, in the beginning of 1661,
after Gillespie’s body had lain in its grave for twelve
years, fetched his tombstone from the churchyard,
and on a market day had it ‘‘ solemnly” broken with
a hammer by the hands of the hangman at the cross
of Kirkcaldy.

Samuel Rutherfurd, although not the best writer,

42 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

was probably the most versatile genius and the most
subtle and adroit controversialist in the list of our
Scottish theologians. He was born at Nisbet, in the
parish of Crailing, in Roxburghshire, in 1600. After
studying and teaching in the University of Hdin-
burgh, he was ordained, in 1627, minister of Anwoth
in Galloway. Banished to Aberdeen in 1636, he
carried on a controversy about the ceremonies, with
Dr Robert Barron, one of the Aberdeen doctors, and
wrote many of these Spiritual Letters, by which
alone he is now known to many. He was a member
of the famous Glasgow Assembly of 1638. In the
following year he was appointed professor and
minister at St Andrews; and, in 1643, he was
~ sent to London as one of the Scottish Commissioners
‘to the Westminster Assembly. He was made Prin-
cipal of the New College, St Andrews, in 1647; and
after this he declined an invitation from Edinburgh
University, and two calls to professorships in Dutch
colleges at Harderwyck and Utrecht. He continued
in St Andrews till his death in 1661.

Unlike Gillespie, Rutherfurd has written on a great
variety of subjects. In the department of practical
and experimental religion, we have from his hand The
Trial and Triumph of Faith, Christ Dying and
Drawing Sinners to Himself, The Covenant of Life
Opened, Influences of the Infe of Grace, and his
Letters, everywhere spoken of, if not everywhere read.
We have also able and profound works in scholastic
and polemic theology, chiefly in the Arminian and

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 43

Antinomian controversies — Exercitationes Apolo-
geticae pro Divina Gratia, A Survey of the Spiritual
Antichrist, Disputatio Scholastica de Divina Pro-
videntia, Examen Arminianismi, this last being a
summary of the lectures delivered on the subject to
the students of St Andrews.

But one work of Rutherfurd’s stands by itself—his
Lex Rex: a Treatise of Civil Policy concerning Pre-
rogative, published in London in 1644, during the
author’s residence in the metropolis as a member of
the Westminster Assembly. It is a contention for the
just prerogatives of king and people. The immediate
occasion of its preparation was the appearance of a
pamphlet by John Maxwell, excommunicated bishop
of Ross, entitled Sacro-sancta Regum Majestas, in
which abject, unquestioning submission to kings was
proclaimed, the divine right of kings was asserted in
the most absolute way, and any protest or even
suggestion of reform on the part of the people was
pronounced not only rebellion but sacrilege. An
insignificant tract was thus the occasion of the writing
of a very great work, one of the world’s classics. In
Lex Rex Rutherfurd discusses the question as to the
source of human sovereignty, and shows that it is
from the people, so that in cases of necessity the exer-
cise of the power may be resumed by them. He shows
that the monarch is not made such by the people
absolutely, but conditionally, that the people and par-
liament have superior power, so that the king is not
above law, either divine or human. He comes to the

44 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

conclusion that absolute monarchy is the worst of all
forms of government, and that in matters unlawful,
passive as well as active obedience must be refused to
the commands of the ruling power. It cannot be said
that in producing such a work as this the author was
turning aside from the proper sphere of a theologian
to that of a publicist or politician. All the questions
discussed are fundamental, the answering of which
was absolutely necessary in order that the attitude
assumed by the Covenanters in opposition to the
civil government might be vindicated. The treatise
itself bears little trace of the circumstances which
called it forth. It is written, upon the whole, in a
calm and dignified, argumentative style, and in the
body of the work the writer appears to lose sight of
his immediate antagonist. In the preface, however,
his contempt for the pamphleteer causes him to break
forth in language that is certainly violent, and, even
for the seventeenth century, somewhat abusive and
coarse. ‘‘Any unclean spirit from hell could not
speak a blacker lie.” ‘Buchanan and Mr Melvin
were doctors of divinity, and could have taught such
an ass as John Maxwell.” ‘This cursed prelate hath
written of late a treatise against the presbyterial
government of Scotland, in which there is a bundle of
lies, hellish calumnies, and gross errors.” Probably
there was something about Maxwell’s conduct and
character peculiarly aggravating to those whose duty
it was to criticise his writings, for Baillie, who was of
a gentle disposition, and inclined to take a charitable

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 45

view of men and their doings, applies to him epithets
scarcely less strong than those of Rutherfurd. The
provocation may have been great; but the language
ought to have been less vehement.

The writings of Rutherfurd which specially concern
us in these lectures are those which deal directly with
questions of church government and polity. In A
Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery
am Scotland, published in 1642, the ecclesiastic sets
himself to prove, against Independents and Separa-
tists, that the ‘presbyterian discipline is the true
apostolic rule in the house of God, and that the
government of the Church by presbyteries and synods
has the sanction of Christ and His Apostles.

In the Due Right of Presbyteries ; or, a Peaceable
Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland,
published in London, 1644, he writes specially against
John Robertson and the Independents of New Eng-
land, in opposition to their theory of Congregational
Independency. In the Divine Right of Church-
government and Hxcommunication, to which is
added A brief tractate on Scandal, published two)
years later, Rutherfurd enters into discussion with
Erastus regarding the nature of excommunication and
the power of the Church to administer it. He then
enters the lists with Hooker, Morton, Forbes, and \
others, in regard to the use of ceremonies, and especi- |
ally the Service Book. This treatise is specially valu- /
able for its treatment of the relation of the civil |
magistrate to the Church, and the respective limits of

46 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

the civil and ecclesiastical powers. Finally, in A Free
Disputation against pretended Liberty of Conscience,
which issued from the London press in 1649, our
author criticises the position of John Goodwin,
Jeremy Taylor, and others, maintaining in opposition
to them that errors in non-fundamentals obstinately
held are punishable, and that only “some far-off
errors may be tolerated.” 1

In all these writings Rutherfurd displays an amaz-
ing amount and variety of reading. He is equally at
home among the early Church Fathers, the medizval
Schoolmen, the Reformers of Germany, France, and
England, the Romish Doctors, the great Anglican
Divines. Arguments elaborated in great Latin folios
_ are often referred to in a single line, while the exact
reference is given in the margin. Aquinas, Cajetan,
Bellarmine, Vasquez, Joannes de Lugo—these are
samples of the authorities of whose works he writes
with the easy familiarity of thorough and long ac-
quaintance. His quotations and references are
evidently made at first hand, and none are bor-

1 [ “So it would appeare, that some lower errours, that are farre off,
without the compasse of the ordinary discerning of man, and lye at a
distance from the foundation (as fundamentals, and Gospell-promises
lye neare the heart of Christ) may bee dispensed with.” Chap. vii.
p. 97. What in Rutherfurd’s estimate came under the description of
“far off errors” can be gathered from the subsequent mention of such
questions as these: ‘“‘What became of the meate that Christ eate after
his resurrection when he was now in the state of immortality ?”
‘Whether the heavens and earth, after the day of judgement, shall be
annihillated ...or if they shal be renewed and delivered from
vanity and indued with new qualities?” . . . “The virginity of Mary
for all her life.”]

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 47

rowed from earlier controversialists. His learning
was also quite up to date. He shows familiar
acquaintance with the writings of contemporaries,
like Salmasius, Forbes of Corse, Richard Hooker of
that time and class, which makes it evident that
his scholarship was not merely antiquarian. As we
proceed, we shall find something in one or other of
these works of Rutherfurd useful to us under each
of the divisions of the subject which will occupy
us in these lectures.

[ We bring this introductory lecture to a close with
brief notices of other three Scottish contributors to
the theology of our period and our subject. |

(1) James Durham was born in the parish of
Monifieth in 1622, and, after studying divinity under
David Dickson in Glasgow, he was licensed to preach
the gospel in 1646. In the following year he was
ordained minister of a charge in Glasgow. After-
wards he was appointed chaplain to the king, and in
1651 he returned to Glasgow as minister of the
Inner Kirk in the Cathedral. Like Gillespie, he
died early, in his thirty-sixth year.

His sermons on The Unsearchable Riches of Christ ;
on Christ Crucified: or, the Marrow of the Gospel;
his Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments,
as well as his Exposition of the Song of Solomon,
and of The Book of Job are still read; and to a yet
narrower circle of readers he is known by his large
Commentarte on the Book of Revelation. He is
understood to have assisted David Dickson in draw-

48 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

ing up the admirable little treatise entitled, The Sum
of Saving Knowledge—‘ the work,” says M‘Cheyne,
“which I think first of all wrought a saving change in
me.” The work, however, which is of special interest
to us at present is one published in 1659, the year after
his death, by his father-in-law John Carstares, who was
also his colleague. It is introduced with a preface
written by the famous Robert Blair of St Andrews.
This work is entitled, The Dying Man's Testament to
the Church of Scotland; or, A Treatise concerning
Scandal. Taken all in all it is the very best book
we have on the subject. It is divided into four parts.
1. Concerning Scandal in the general. 2. Concern-
ing Public Scandal, or Scandals as they are the
object of Church-censures, and more particularly
as they are in practice. 3. Concerning Doctrinal
Scandals, or Scandalous Errors. 4. Concerning Scan-
dalous Divisions. The fourth section is particularly
important, and will receive careful consideration when
we come to treat of the views of the theologians of
Scotland regarding the Unity of the Church and the
sin of schism. In it Durham shows himself, as he
was preeminently in his life, a great peacemaker.

(2) John Brown, whose mother, a godly and
talented woman, was one of Rutherfurd’s corre-
spondents, after being minister at Wamphray in
Dumfriesshire for some time, was banished the king-
dom and went to Holland in the beginning of 1663.
He remained there till his death in 1679, having
been for several years minister of the Scots Church

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 49

at Rotterdam. He wrote many admirable theological
works, some of which, as for example, Christ the Way
and the Truth and the Infe, his Commentary on
Romans, The Infe of Justification Opened, still find
‘appreciative readers. His most elaborate work is
De Causa Det Contra Anti-Sabbatarios, a huge
work which would fill at least five goodly octavo
volumes, full of interesting and important matter,
especially regarding fundamental questions about the
sanctions of law and the law of God. He also wrote
a reply in Latin to a Socinian Rationalist, Wolzogius,
on the interpretation of Scripture, and he left a large
manuscript history—Apologia pro Ecclesia. But
his best known work is his Apologetical Narrative
of the particular sufferings of the faithful Ministers
and Professors of the Church of Scotland since
August 1660, which was published in 1665. This
treatise is written with great clearness and vigour.
It will prove in many ways serviceable to us in
our present study. The other work of Brown which
deals with the doctrine of the Church is a duodecimo
of 716 pages, in Latin, published at Amsterdam in
1670, and bound up in one volume with the reply
to Wolzogius. It was written in reply to a Dutch
work by the physician Lambert Velthuysen, entitled
Idolatry and Superstition, and vindicates in thirty-
two propositions or “assertions” the orthodox theory
of the nature of the Church against the exceptions
of the Erastian. This is perhaps the very best book

written by any of our Scottish divines on the
D

50 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

ministry, church government and ecclesiastical dis-
cipline. It embraces in one treatise a full review of
all the topics discussed separately in many volumes
by Gillespie and Rutherfurd. We shall have occasion
to use it freely, especially the full and able preface in
which the author discusses in thirty-two short para-
graphs what may and what may not justify separation
from a corrupt and faulty Church. In common with
all the best Scottish theologians, Brown of Wamphray
had a great horror of ecclesiastical divisions.

(3) Robert M‘Ward? studied under Rutherfurd
at St Andrews, and was afterwards Professor of
Humanity there. He became minister of the Outer
High Church in Glasgow. He was banished about
the same time as John Brown, whose colleague he
~ became in the Scots Church at Rotterdam. He
survived Brown, and died at Rotterdam in 1682.?
He was the first editor of the Letters of Samuel
Rutherfurd, his edition being printed at Rotterdam
in 1664. The only work of his which concerns us
here is Zhe True Non-Conformist, published in
1671, probably at Amsterdam, although the troubles
of the times made it necessary to issue it without
note of place, or name of author and printer. It is
a reply to a small tract of some hundred pages—
“a trifling babble,” as M‘Ward fairly enough calls it

1 [In Wodrow’s Analecta the spelling of the name is Macwaird ;
Baillie, in his Letters, has M‘Quard, Makquard, Macquare, M‘Quare,
and Mackward.]

2[“ or 1683.” Wodrow’s Analecta, vol. i. p. 170; “ December 1681,”
David Laing, Batllie’s Letters, vol. ii. p. 241 n.]

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 51

—published in 1669 in six dialogues, by A Lover of
Peace. It is now known that the author of the tract
was Gilbert Burnet, who, in that same year was
made Professor of Divinity in Glasgow University.
The title of Burnet’s brochure is, 4 Modest and Free
Conference betwixt a Conformist and a Non-Con-
formist about the present Distempers in Scotland.
M‘Ward’s reply is executed with great care and
moderation, and is particularly clear and exact in
vindicating the Covenanters from the charge of
separating from the Church on account of minor
differences.

All those to whom in these sketches we have re-
ferred belonged to the seventeenth century, and for
the most part to the middle rather than the end of
that period. The Church of the Revolution produced
no great theologian. In the generation following
that of Carstares a new school of theologians sprang
up in connection with what is known as the Marrow
Controversy. This discussion did not bear upon the
doctrine of the Church, but almost exclusively on
the doctrines of grace and redemption. Of these
eighteenth century divines only Thomas Boston
is of interest and importance to us, and even he,
voluminous writer as he was, calls for our attention
simply as the author of a short treatise on the subject
of baptism. In his Sixth Miscellany Question he
considers: Who have a right to Baptism and are
to be baptized? These discussions were written
by Boston in his younger days, while minister of

52 THE SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

Simprin, and therefore some time before 1707.
When we come to discuss the doctrine of the nature
of the Church we shall see that Boston, in accordance
with the. general principles of his school, gives a
much narrower definition of the visible Church and
its membership than that of Rutherfurd and his
contemporaries.

In these brief notices of the works of our Scottish
theologians which more directly deal with the question
of the constitution and government of the Church of
Christ I have sought to indicate the character of that
investigation which is to be carried out in these
lectures. Keeping these and similar writings in view,
I propose in next lecture to treat of the idea of the
Church, what it properly is, what is implied in the

~ distinction between the Church as visible and as

invisible, and what, in view of this distinction and
of the right conception of the Church, membership
means and necessarily implies. In the third lecture
I propose to treat of the Unity of the Church, showing
what importance our national divines attached to
this doctrine, how vehemently they opposed all
separation, and how sensitive they were to the charge
of being schismatical. In the fourth lecture I shall
deal with the question of the Purity of the Church,
considering discipline and the infliction of censures
as at once the duty and privilege of the Church, and
discussing the range to which this Discipline extends,
what true liberty of conscience is, and how far the
claims of Toleration were understood and allowed.

ITS LITERATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 53

In the fifth lecture the subject will be Church Power,
what Jurisdiction the Church can and must claim,
what the limits of the civil and the ecclesiastical
kingdoms are, what the State ought to do for the
Church and what she must leave the Church free to
do for herself. The sixth and closing will discuss the
question : What, according to Scottish theology is of
Divine Right? It will be shown in what sense our
divines deserve to be called High Churchmen.

LECTURE II.
THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND MEMBERSHIP IN IT.

THE circumstances of the Scottish Protestant Pres-
byterian Church for more than a hundred years—
from the Reformation to the Revolution—made, not
only her ministers and theologians, but also all her
more thoughtful and attached members study minutely
and carefully the question of the prerogatives of the
Church and the Crown rights of Christ the Mediator,
her supreme and divine Head. During that whole
period the liberty of the Church was threatened by
statesmen and by Churchmen, by the selfish greed
of the nobles and by the restless ambition of ecclesias-
tics, so that the rights of the members and the supreme
claim of the Head of the Church had to be jealously
guarded and valorously defended by those to whom
the honour of Christ was dear, and who prized that
liberty wherewith He has made His people free. In
view of the opposition to which on every side they
were exposed, the defenders of the true Scripture
doctrine of the Church were obliged to begin with
the most rudimentary principles by vindicating the
real existence of the Church as an institution separate
from all other institutions, and of a kind different

from all others. They were required first to prove
54 j

IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND MEMBERSHIP IN IT 55

that there is such a thing as a Church, and then to
show what are its essential characteristics and its
true constituents. They had thus to defend their
idea of the Church, and to determine who, in view
of this, were members of it.

Our earlier:Scottish divines were, first of all, face to
face with the doctrine of the Church maintained by
Romish theologians, not as a mere matter of literary
controversy, but as one of present living interest, on
the issue of which their very existence as a reformed
community depended. Their position was not like
that of a modern Protestant theologian dealing with
the doctrines of the Council of Trent in a purely
historical and objective manner. On the contrary,
they were dealing with a question which the con-
stituencies whom they addressed were required to
answer. What side the Scottish people would take
in the religious conflicts of their times would
largely depend upon the idea of the Church they
would feel themselves obliged to adopt. | Whether
they were to decide in favour of Rome or in favour
of the Reformation would be determined by the
answer they gave to the question about the nature
and membership of the Church. Knox, Melville,
and all the leaders of the Scottish Reformation,
Boyd, Rutherfurd, and all the great teachers who
trained men for the ministry of the Scottish Church,
in view of the notions that had previously been
current throughout the whole land and were being
ever revived by the active propagandists of the old

56 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

faith, found it necessary constantly to reiterate and
elaborately to state the proof for the truth of the
Protestant doctrine of the Church and who belong
to it.

The leading points of difference between the re-
formed and Romish doctrine of the Church are clearly
set forth in the sixteenth chapter of The Scots Con-
Jession of Faith, which was mainly the work of Knox.
As all subsequent discussions on this subject in the
writings of our Scottish divines proceed upon the lines
indicated in this authoritative pronouncement of the
Scottish Protestant Church of 1560, it may be desir-
able to quote it hereat length. It runs as follows : “ As
we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
_ so do we most constantly believe that from the be-
ginning there hath been, now is, and to the end of
the world shall be one Kirk; that is to say, one
company and multitude of men chosen of God, who
rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in
Christ Jesus, who is the only Head of the same Kirk,
which also is the body and spouse of Christ Jesus ;
which Kirk is Catholic, that is, universal, because it
containeth the elect of all ages, of all realms, nations
and tongues, be they of the Jews, or be they of the
Gentiles, who have communion and society with God
the Father, and with His Son Christ Jesus, through
the sanctification of His Holy Spirit ; and, therefore,
it is called the communion, not of profane persons,
but of saints, who, as citizens of the heavenly Jeru-
salem, have the fruition of the most inestimable

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 57

benefits, to wit, of one God, one Lord Jesus, one faith,
and one baptism; out of the which Kirk there is
neither life nor eternal felicity. And therefore we
utterly abhor the blasphemy of those that affirm
that men which live according to equity and justice
shall be saved, what religion soever they have pro-
fessed. For as without Christ Jesus there is neither
life nor salvation, so shall there none be participant
thereof, but such as the Father hath given unto His
Son Christ Jesus, and those that in time come to Him,
avow His doctrine, and believe in Him (we comprehend
the children with the faithful parents). This Kirk is
invisible, known only to God, Who alone knoweth
whom He hath chosen, and comprehendeth as well
the elect that be departed (commonly called the Kirk
triumphant), as those that yet live and fight against
sin and Satan, and those that shall live hereafter.”
Again, in the eighteenth chapter, the notes by which
the true Kirk may be distinguished from the false are
declared to be these three: The true preaching of
the word of God; the right administration of the
Sacraments of Christ Jesus; and ecclesiastical dis-
cipline uprightly ministered. ‘“ Wheresoever,” it is
added, “these notes are seen, and of any time con-
tinue (be the number never so few, about two or
three), there, without all doubt, is the true Church
of Christ, who, according to his promise, is in the
midst of them, not that universal, but particular, such
as was in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus and other places.
And such Kirks we, the inhabitants of the realm of

58 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

Scotland, professors of Christ Jesus, assert ourselves
to have in our cities, towns, and places reformed.” ?
This is that doctrine of the Church which is con-
sistently set forth by our Scottish divines in opposition
especially to the doctrine of Rome. In all their
writings I have nowhere found this doctrine more
clearly stated than in the polemic against the Romish
theory by Boyd in his exposition of the closing section
of the first chapter of Ephesians. He there deals
directly with Bellarmine’s statement of the Romish
position. In the second volume of his great work,
Disputationes de controversus Christianae fide,
published scarcely twenty years before Boyd's
lectures were written, this distinguished defender
of his Church’s faith discusses the subject of the
Church. Boyd takes up his statement and exposition
of this doctrine and criticises it vigorously in light of
the Scripture which he is expounding. Bellarmine
thus indicates the difference between the Romish and
the Reformed doctrine: “They (7.e. Protestants) to
constitute anyone a member of the Church, require
internal graces, and so make the true Church in-
visible ; we, on the contrary, believe indeed that all
graces, faith, hope, love, etc., are to be found in the
Church, but we do not think that it is required, in
order that anyone, in any way, may be called a
member of the true Church, that he have any internal

1 [Laing’s Knoz, vol. ii. pp. 108-109, 110-111. Dunlop’s Collection of
Confessions of Faith, vol. ii. pp. 59-62, 65-72.]

2 [In Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Ephesios Prelectiones supra CC.
1652.]

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 59

grace, but only an external profession of faith and the
partaking of the sacraments, which is perceived by
the senses.”! In the same chapter Bellarmine,
borrowing from Augustine, describes the Church as
a living organism, made up of soul and body, the
soul being the inward graces of the Spirit, the body
an outward profession of faith and partaking of the
sacraments. And he distinguishes three classes of
members of the Church: (1) Those who are of the
soul and of the body, members in the fullest sense ;
(2) those who are of the soul but not of the body,
excommunicates and catechumens; (3) those who are
of the body but not of the soul, who have only
a profession without any real faith. These last
may be hypocrites, heretics, even atheists, if only
they are such secretly, not openly and by pro-
fession, and still they are true members of the Church,
and in number, strength and influence may be pre-
ponderating. The faithless who feign faith are true
members, though arid and dead. According to this
theory of Bellarmine and the Romish Church there is
no Church but the visible Church, the members of
which profess the Catholic faith, receive the sacra-
ments, and recognise the authority of the Pope. It
is a cetus hominum as visible and palpable as the
cetus Populus Romanus, or the Kingdom of France,
or the Republic of Venice. The Church is an out-
ward institution in which men are made holy, and of
which good and bad alike are members.

1 Book iii. De Ecclesia militante, chap. 2.

60 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

Boyd ridicules the idea of such a body as is repre-
sented by Bellarmine. Whoever dreamed, he asks, of
an animated body of this kind, of which some of the
members are of the soul and not of the body, and
others of the body and not of the soul, while some
have life but are without motion! Such a body
must be mutilated, or monstrous, or paralysed, or
apoplectic, some sort of animal preternatural or un-
natural. He shows admirably how impossible it is to
understand the Apostle in Ephesians first chapter and
twenty-third verse, as if Christ’s fulness could be in
dead members who perform none of the functions
of the living body. He illustrates his pomt from
Aristotle, who says that an eye deprived of the
power of seeing is not properly an eye any more than
a stone eye or a painted one.!

The real cause of the difference between the Romish
and the Protestant ideas of the Church is, as Boyd
perceives, the different ideas of faith entertained by
Romanists and the Reformers. The Romish idea of
faith as essentially a mere intellectual assent allowed the
Romanist to distinguish fides informis—a mere know-
ledge of and acquiescence in the authorised Church
teaching, and fides formata—a knowledge of the
truth powerfully affecting the heart and life. The
Protestant doctrine of faith admits no such distinction,
and refuses to call anything faith which worketh not
by love. Consequently the Protestant theologian
cannot recognise mere assent to Church doctrine,

1 De Anima, ii. 1.

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 61

without reference to walk and conversation, as
Christian faith, or as qualifying him who has that
and nothing more to be a member of the true Church.

Here we have evidently two different views of the
Church diametrically opposed to each other, the one
defining the Church as an institute of salvation into
which men are gathered that they may have the
Gospel preached to them and the sacraments ad-
ministered, that by the use of these, as means of
grace, they may be saved, and the other defining the
Church as a company of elect believers, chosen unto
life, and all of them exercising faith in Christ to the
saving of their souls. To the Church, as understood
by the former, all belong who attach themselves to it
by outward profession ; to the Church, in the judg-
ment of the latter, only those belong who truly
believe in Christ.

The extreme opponents of Romish externalism,
the polemical Congregationalists and Independents
of New England, as well as the Separatists generally,
refused to recognise any Church but that made up of
true believers, who on seeking admission to its member-
ship, not only profess their acceptance of the true
faith, but give a personal testimony as to the saving
work of the Spirit in their hearts, and are received
into the communion of the Church as converted
persons.

From the way in which Boyd contests the position
of Bellarmine, it might seem as if he and his school
had adopted this doctrine of a pure Church of true

62 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

believers. In the sense of the Independents, they
were very far from doing so. In his Peaceable and
Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbyterie in Scotland,
Rutherfurd (as indeed all the other writers to whom
we have referred do more or less directly) opposes the
Independents and Separatists, not only in regard to
their notion of congregational independency, but also
in the matter of their description of a true Church
and membership therein. The Separatists maintained
that the rightly constituted Church must consist of
the Lord’s planting, of a redeemed people, that the
true visible Church is a company of people called and
separated from the world by the word of God, and
joined together in a voluntary profession of faith, that
if on trial one be found graceless and scandalous he is
~ not presented as a candidate. The position main-
tained is that none can be members of the visible
Church but such as be regenerate, so far as the
Church can discern.!

Now we may say at once that Rutherfurd and
Scottish protestant theologians generally sympathise
with the Independents and Separatists against the
Romanists to this extent, that they recognise as true
members of the Church only genuine believers; but
then this Church, of which only the faithful are mem-
bers, is not with them the visible but the invisible
Church, the members of which are known only to

1 [Rutherfurd, A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul’s Presbyterte tn
Scotland: Lond., 1642, pp. 92 et seg. Comp. The Due Right of Presby-
tertes : Lond., 1644, pp. 241 et seq.]

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 63

God. The Romanists and the Separatists were agreed
in recognising only the visible Church, which, accord-
ing to the Romanists, is made up of all adherents of
the visible society subject to the Pope, whether in
character and life, good or bad, but which, according
to the Separatists, is made up only of true believers or
regenerate persons.

Our Scottish divines, in opposition to both Roman-
ists and Independents, bring in the distinction of the
visible and invisible Church. The criticism which
they passed upon both the contrary theses which they
rejected was that they ascribed to the visible Church
attributes that were properly applicable only to the
invisible ; that they assigned to an object of sense
characters that belonged, primarily at least, to an
object of faith ; that they identified or confused the
Church de facto with the Church de jure. In
answer to the assertion of those who define the visible
Church as a company of true believers, Rutherfurd
maintains that, while they should reject candidates
that are scandalous, they cannot proceed in the same
way with one held to be graceless, except in so far as
his gracelessness has become matter of scandal. He
points out that nothing of this kind was done in the
receiving of the three thousand added to the Church
on the day of Pentecost. Freedom from scandal is
a visible thing, and is required in a visible Church
member, but grace is invisible, and can be no note of
a member of a visible Church, but only of a member
of the invisible Church. It was not required by the

64 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

Apostles in the case of Simon Magus. In marking
the distinction between the visible and the invisible
Church, Rutherfurd points out that there are some
saints by external vocation who are not chosen, some
saints by internal and effectual vocation, called and
chosen of God. Any who blamelessly profess Christ
are ecclesiastically, 7 foro ecclesie@, true and valid
members of the Church visible, but unless they be
sincere believers they are not, morally and in foro
Det, living members of the invisible Church. Hence
the privileges of Christians, the covenant promises,
the titles of spouse, bride, temple of the Holy Ghost,
etc., belong to the members of the invisible Church,
and not, as the Papists wrongly suppose, to members
of the Church visible as such. A seen profession is
the ground of admission to membership in the visible
Church. Those who have such a profession are ad-
mitted as true members in the judgment of charity.
A mere negative satisfaction, indeed, in the sense of
not knowing anything to the contrary of persons of
whom nothing is known either by sight or by report,
is not enough ; but, on the other hand, a positive
satisfaction by assured signs of regeneration cannot be
demanded. It is enough if, of one whose behaviour
and general walk are known, we know nothing incon-
sistent with his profession. And so Rutherfurd
distinguishes three classes of men: (1) Some pro-
fessedly and notoriously flagitious and wicked, who,
without lack of charity, may be excluded; (2) some
professedly sanctified and holy, who as such may

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 65

be accepted and welcomed to the visible Church;
(3) some between these two, of whom we cannot with
any certainty or satisfaction to the conscience say that
they are genuine believers, nor yet affirm that they
are still in a state of nature. To reject a weak one
and so break a bruised reed is no less a sin than, by
laxity or an undue stretch of charity, to receive a
hypocrite. To refuse such a one is materially the
same as to excommunicate him.

From the position which he thus takes up, Ruther-
furd was able to answer the Separatists as the
Romanists could not do. Those who insist that the
visible Church consists only of regenerate persons |
urge the consideration that as Christ is the Head of)
the Church those who are members of it are mem-
bers of Christ’s body. Against this Rutherfurd|
maintains that Christ is not Head of the Church
as it is visible, but only of those members in|
that Church who are members of the Church in-|
visible. That Christ is Head of the Church as visible |
he does not find anywhere in the Word of God. Only |
in a large sense can He be called Head of the visible}
Church as such, in respect of the influence of the
common graces for the ministry, government, and|
discipline. And so he discovers in the theory that.
Christ is Head of the Church as it is visible the|
Arminian doctrine of universal grace. In like manner
he answers the argument that as God added to the
Church such as should be saved,! so also the Lord’s

1/ Acts ii. 47: And the Lord added to them day by day those that were
being saved. R.V.]
E

66 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

stewards should continue to do so in His house, by
saying that God added those saved ones to the in-
visible Church. God’s adding is by an internal
operation, by the giving of faith and saving grace ;
but this cannot be a rule for our admitting to the
visible Church. Just because we cannot see God going
before in the bestowing of invisible grace, the ministers
of the Church cannot here follow by adding such
only and all such to the Church.

Rutherfurd having got hold of the position that
an invisible grace cannot be of the essence of a visible
association, presses the principle relentlessly to its
strictly logical conclusion. The Independents had
said that there might be a fully organised, local,
visible Church consisting of seven members. Ruther-
furd says that in such a congregation or visible
Church the whole seven may be hypocrites and un-
converted persons, and yet in it we have a visible
Church performing all church acts of a visible profes-
sion. A community professing the faith in which the
word is preached, the sacraments are administered,
and discipline is exercised may not have in it one
sincere believer, but only formal and heartless pro-
fessors, and yet it is a true visible Church.

While Rutherfurd is thoroughly clear and logical in
all his distinctions and arguments, it is evident that
those against whom he writes are often confused and
inconsistent in their statements. One of those op-
ponents is John Robinson, many of whose com-
panions had gone out to New England, and there

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 67

founded the congregational churches of the Pilgrim
Fathers. Now Robinson, as well as all the saner and
more capable men of that party, while he was a
Separatist and maintainer of the theory of a pure
church communion, was not consciously an Anabaptist,
nor was he inclined fanatically to insist upon the ab-
solute purity de facto of their Church membership.

It is pleasing to find Rutherfurd, keen controver-
sialist as he was, and apt to rail against his opponents
as though he could admit no good in any one who
differed from him, speaking respectfully and kindly of
Robinson and his friends. Even when he is urging
that their position logically requires the conclusion
that there is nothing that defiles, no sin, in the visible
Church, he regards this as an inconsistency on their
part. ‘ This,” he writes, “is the very doctrine of
Anabaptists though we know our dear brethren hate
that Sect and their Doctrine.” And in his preface he
says: “I heartily desire not to appear as an adversary
to the holy, reverend, and learned Brethren who are
sufferers for the truth, for there be wide marches
betwixt striving and disputing. Why should we
strive? for we be Brethren, the Sons of one father,
the born Citizens of one mother Jerusalem. To dis-
pute is not to contend. We strive as we are carnal,
we dispute as we are men, we war from our lusts, we
dispute from diversity of star-light and day-light.” }

1 [The Due Right of Presbyteries or a Peaceable Plea for the Government

of the Church of Scotland: Lond. 1644, chap. ix. § 9, p. 267. To the
Reader, p. ii]

68 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

Some of the references to Scripture made by the
Separatists really tell against themselves. They made
the watchfulness of the officers of the Jewish temple
to prevent any ceremonially unclean persons entering
its sacred precincts, a type of the watchfulness which
officers of the Christian Church should show in guard-
ing it from the entrance of any that are sinful. But
it is unquestionable that this uncleanness was an out-
ward thing which could be seen and reported upon.
Then again, they quote the passage from the Revela-
tion in which the inhabitants of the city of God are
described as all holy, while without are dogs,! whereas
it is manifest that this cannot be applied to the visible
Church, but only to the Kingdom of Glory, which is
the Church invisible. Indeed many of the objections
- made by Robinson and his party against what seems
to them the only alternative to their own doctrine
really apply not to the Protestant doctrine maintained
by Rutherfurd, but only to the Romish doctrine. Thus
we find Robinson admitting that the purest Church on
earth may consist of good and bad in God’s eye. This
surely is precisely what Rutherfurd and the Scottish
divines generally contend for. But the English
Puritan goes on to say that the question is about
the true and natural members whereof the Church
is orderly gathered, and that it would be bad divinity
to make ungodly persons the true matter of such, and
profaneness a property of the same, simply because
many seeming saints creep in. This is a supposition

1 [Apoc. xxii. 11-15.]

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 69

that no one in the least measure acquainted with
the views of Rutherfurd and his school could for a
single moment entertain. Who would ever dream
of the Scottish divine making ungodliness and pro-
faneness notes of members of the Church, or even
admitting to the communion of the Church those
whose outward walk gives evidence of ungodliness
or profanity ? Further, in his treatise on the Justi-
fication of Separation! we find Robinson saying:
“ All the Churches that ever the Lord planted con-
sisted of good only, as the Church of the angels in
heaven and of mankind in paradise. God hath also
these same ends in creating and restoring His Churches,
and if it were the will of God that persons notoriously
wicked should be admitted into the Church then
should God directly cross Himself and His own ends,
and should receive into the visible covenant of grace
such as were not of the visible estate of grace, and
should plant such in His Church for the glory of His
name as served for no other use than to cause His name
to be blasphemed.” Now here again it is quite evident
that notoriously wicked persons are kept out of the
visible Church just because the notoriousness of their
wickedness has made that wickedness visible.

All this confusion arises in consequence of the
refusal to acknowledge the distinction between the
‘Church as it is visible and as it is invisible, in a
thorough going manner. It is one of the grand
excellences of the Scottish doctrine of the Church

1[A Justification of Separation from the Church of England, 1610.]

70 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

that this distinction is very clearly marked and
most logically and consistently carried out. We can
avoid the inconsistency of admitting on the one hand,
that hypocrites and evil men may be in the purest
churches on earth, and yet, on the other hand, claim-
ing for the Church militant all the attributes of fault-
lessness and perfect holiness, only when we make the
former statement with reference to the visible Church
and the latter with reference to the Church as invisible.

A question has been raised as to the value and
validity of this distinction of the visible and invisible
Church. It may be disputed whether the phrase in-
visible Church is not a contradiction in terms. Is not
a church essentzally something visible, even though it
may be that the qualities by which men are con-
stituted members of it are in themselves invisible?
Their faith, their saintliness, their spirituality are all
hidden graces, but the men in whom these are present
are visible and any association they may form is a
visible thing. A church is a coetus hominum, whether
we think of it as a coetus electorum or as a coetus
vocatorum. An invisible association is nothing real.
It is not conceivable as an association, for so soon as
a uniting principle is introduced the quality of
visibility necessarily appears. It can be nothing
more, therefore, than an abstract ideal. While our
Scottish divines used the terms visible and invisible
to indicate the distinction of which we are now
speaking, it is quite evident they did not employ them
in a physical acceptation. All that they meant was

MEMBERSHIP IN IT iL

that the inward graces and spiritual qualities which
are essential to membership in the Church before God
are in themselves incognisable by any human faculty
and cannot therefore be the condition of membership
in any community formed by the association of a
greater or less number of men. “It is not a distinc-
tion,’ says Brown of Wamphray, “of a genus into
species, for then the Church would not be one, nor is
it a distinction of a whole into its parts, as if one
part of the Church were visible and another invisible ;
and yet, though this distinction does not make two
churches, many things are said about the Church and
attributed to it on account of the faithful and effectu-
ally called who are members of the Church as it is
invisible, which do not apply to all the members of
the visible Church.”! If this is borne in mind we
shall be able to distinguish in Scripture those passages
which speak of the Church as made up of a company
of elect believers and those which speak of it as com-
posed of a company of persons who have been called
and who profess the true religion. The latter is the
Church in which a place is found for Simon Magus,
Ananias and Sapphira and such like; the former is
the Church which Christ sanctifies, and presents at
last to God holy and without blemish.

It says much for the intellectual sanity, the level
headeduess of our Scottish divines that they were not
driven by their polemic against Rome to any under-

1 [Contra Wolzogium et Velthusium. Amstelodam, 1670]. Preefatio,
115, et seq.

72 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

valuing of the visible Church. Rome had recognised
only the visible Church on earth. The only invisible
Church according to Romanists was the Church
triumphant which had been visible, or the Church of
the unborn which would yet be visible. To the
opponents of such teaching there was presented un-
doubtedly a great temptation to say that this visibl
Church, in large sections of which during many age
there might not be even one sincere believer, was no)
true Church at all. This was what the sectaries and
separatists among the Independents as well as the
Anabaptists actually said. But the Scottish presby-
terians, on the contrary, while pressing the idea of.,
the invisible Church against the Romish denial of it, }
insist, in opposition to the Separatists, upon the real
existence of the visible Church as a true Church.
The Church visible, they said, is properly enough
called such, because the parts of which this whole is
made up are visible, and while the elect are members
of it they are such not as elect but as called. This
visible company is the field in which not only good
wheat, but also tares are seen, it is the household in
which there are not only vessels unto honour, but
also vessels unto dishonour. It is in this visible
Church that the word is preached, the sacraments
administered, and discipline exercised, for to it Christ
gave the ministry and all the sacred ordinances as
means of grace for the ingathering and binding to-
gether of the saints. By recognising at the same
time the idea of the invisible Church they escaped

MEMBERSHIP IN IT fo

the absurdity into which the Romanists, for want of
this distinction, were led of claiming for this Church,
properly distinguished only by external notes, that
holiness and that infallibility which could rationally
be postulated only of those who have the internal
qualifications and graces which are invisible.

In dealing with the Puritans, Rutherfurd, Brown,
and the other Scottish divines manifested great tender-
ness and patience, not only because they recognised
them as holy men and fellow sufferers for the truth,
but also because they had much sympathy with their
zeal for the purity of the Church and a strong revulsion
from that laxity of discipline and irreligious indiffer-
entism against which they had been driven vehemently
to protest. We must beware of being driven by a
reaction against the gross exaggerations too generally
current of the severity and sternness of our covenant-
ing forefathers in matters of discipline, into an equally
unjust and incorrect representation of their principles,
as if they were not earnest in heart and soul to secure
as far as possible purity of doctrine and consistency of
life among the members of the visible Church.
This was the injustice to which Rutherfurd and his
friends were actually subjected by their critics among
the more extreme sectaries and independents.

It has always seemed to me that the misunderstand-
ing of the Scottish doctrine of the Church on the part
of English separatists was very similar to that which
at present exists on the part of evangelical perfectionists
in regard to the position of those who hold that Chris-

74 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

tian perfection is an ideal not fully attaimed unto
by any, but very energetically and devoutly to be
striven after by all. The Covenanters were just as
anxious as any of the English brethren could be that
the membership of the visible Church should correspond
with the membership of the invisible, that the hypo-
crites in it, who were seemingly good but really bad,
should become in reality as well as in appearance
good; but they reverently and rightly shrank from
putting themselves in God’s place or attempting to
snatch from Him His distinguishing prerogative by
sitting in judgment, not on the outward conduct
merely but on the secret thoughts and intents of the
heart. The cause of this antagonistic attitude to-
wards the Scottish divines on the part of men who
were in principle and heart at one with them was a
confusion of mind which, in the circumstances, was, to
some extent, explainable if not altogether excusable.
Anyone who reads the writings of the Separatists of the
Puritan period, the writings of men who had recoiled)
from the externalism of the Romish corruptions which
made a merely verbal profession of adherence to the
Christian creed the one condition of membership, but
who had no intention of adopting the Anabaptist
position as to an absolutely pure visible Church, will
see that they are constantly confusing the Church “I
it is invisible and as it is visible, and that they insist
upon judging the Church visible by the marks that
belong only to the Church invisible.

A very little consideration will show that extreme

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 75

care must be taken if, on the one hand, we are to
avoid the mistake of the Separatists who sought to
determine membership in the visible Church by the
possession of invisible grace, and, on the other hand,
to avoid reverting to the latitudinarianism of the
Romish Church which made the profession of faith a
purely formal and external affair.

The Scottish divine who does this more elaborately
and clearly than any other is Brown of Wamphray.
He argues strenuously against the idea that true and |
saving grace is to be regarded as of the essence of the
Church as it is visible. He shows that if this be |
assumed, certain absurd results will of necessity follow. |
The administration of the word in the visible Church |
cannot be the ordinary means instituted by God for the
conversion of sinners, if it be assumed that already all,
the members of the visible Church are converted and)
in possession of true faith. It would also follow that
pastors should not present to their congregations any-|
thing calculated and intended to awaken the conscience |
of their hearers or aim at the conversion of any of |
them, but should only address the converted for their |
edification, confirmation and comfort; that Christ |
never appointed pastors for the collecting and in-
gathering of souls; and that faith does not come by |
preaching and hearing. The consequence of such a
theory would also be to exclude many truly pious
persons who are like bruised reeds and smoking flax,
and who cannot articulately declare the mode and |
method by which they were converted to God, or who |

76 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

by reason of certain vexing corruptions can scarcely
bear judgment being passed upon their state by. man.
Further, on this theory it seems hard to say where the
exercise of church discipline can come in. Those who
are held to be destitute of grace are to be excom-
municated, or, as graceless persons, they are to be
regarded as non-members, whereas the openly wicked,
of whom alone, judged by their works it can be safely
said that they are destitute of grace, cannot be ex-
communicated, because those who are without are not
to be judged by the Church. The members of the
Church are not to be judged because as such they are
pious, and the impious are also exempt because they
are outside of the Church. If however, excommunica-
tion has been exercised upon anyone then, when he
is restored, he must be rebaptized, because his ex-
communication proceeded on the ground that he was
destitute of grace, that he had been no true member
of the Church, and that his former baptism was null,
in fact no baptism at all. And thus, however little they
intended it, and however little they wished it, those
holding this theory of church membership would be
in consistency obliged in the end to adopt the most
objectionable and the most revolutionary conclusions
of the Anabaptists.

In view of these palpable absurdities and confusions
to which the Separatist theory necessarily led, Brown
stoutly maintained that saving grace is not of the
essence of the visible Church as such. And in this
contention he has with him, not only all the other

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 16

great Scottish divines, but all the leading Reformed
theologians, from whose writings he quotes the clear
statements of Amesius and Trelcatius—the former still
well remembered by theological students, the latter
probably unknown to most, but in his day a famous
exegetical professor in Leyden, colleague of Junnius
and Gomarus, and teacher of Vossius.! These divines
were careful to distinguish the coetus electorwm from
the coetus vocatorum, and to insist that the visible
Church is made up not of the elect as such but of the
called.

I suppose there never was a body of men who
regarded the partaking of what they called “ sealing
ordinances” with more reverential awe than did the
old Scottish covenanters, or who were more intensely
anxious that these ordinances should not be profaned
by anyone coming forward thoughtlessly and without
preparation. But they did not commit the mistake
of narrowing their notion of Church membership so as
only to include those whom they would admit to the
Lord’s Table. On the contrary they regarded these
as forming only a part of the visible Church, so that
what is distinctive about them, the declaration that
they are possessed of saving grace, is not necessary to
their admission into the membership of the Church.
In other words, church membership is something
wider than the list of communicants. It is out of
the Church membership that communicants are
drawn.

1 [Trelcatius Loct Communes Theologiae, Opuscula Theologica Omnia. ]

™

78 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

And yet it would be wrong to say that in these old
Scottish books we find two different kinds of Churches
distinguished—such a distinction as is often popularly
represented by the figure of two concentric circles, of
which the inner one represents the Church of those
who are professedly regenerate, and the outer one
that and in addition also the company of those who,
without any such profession, wait upon the preaching
of the word and enjoy other advantages that arise
from a purely external atttachment to the Church.
They simply say that so far as Church membership
goes we have nothing to do with this distinction. It
is not the profession of the possession of grace, but
only the waiting upon the ordinances of grace that

makes one a member of the Church. In short, the
- Church of Rutherfurd and Brown was made up of all
baptised adherents, all, that is to say, of Christian
descent, who continue to frequent the preaching of!
the word. |

It might very naturally be objected that the Church
membership here insisted upon was unreal and purely
formal. In answer to this Brown calls attention to
the distinction between calling and election. Many
are called who are not chosen, and therefore not
regenerate. But though calling in such a case may
not he saving, it is yet proper to the Church and real
because given forth by God and it produces real
results even though these be not saving. Besides not
only the truely pious, but others also have a certain
relation to Christ as Head of the visible Church, for

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 79

from Him they have gifts, they are truly baptised,
they truly exercise the ministry, are the object of
ecclesiastical discipline, and so members of the Church
or citizens and subjects of Christ.

But while the Scottish divines regarded it as ex-
tremely important thus to emphasise the significance
of what in itself might be nothing more than an
external and formal connection with the Church, they
are very far from saying that such a merely nominal
connection, when it is evidently and demonstrably
nothing more, can be regarded as a real Church
membership. They are careful to maintain that he
only is truly a member of the visible Church who
seriously professes the Christian religion and subjects
himself to the institutions of Christ. Seriously, they
say, not feignedly, theatrically or openly hypocriti-
cally, although there may not be any gracious sincerity
or heart conversion. It is not right that anyone
should be excluded or treated as a non-member, if
only he makes such a profession, although he is not
regenerate, nor to say of anyone on the sole ground
or consideration that he is not regenerate that he is
therefore not a member. And let us remember that
no one could possibly have a more profound sense of
the need of regeneration than Brown and Rutherfurd,
who are thoroughly agreed in affirming that the fact
of regeneration cannot be made a note or an essential
requirement of Church members. In support of his
position Brown advances five arguments.

(1) God desires even unregenerate persons to be

80 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

received into His Church that they may become
regenerate, for the visible Church is like a workshop
or laboratory (officina) ; (2) Pastors in the visible
Church are the instruments of conversion and re-
generation ; (3) Formerly proselytes were admitted
into the Jewish Church on making such a profession ;
(4) Such a profession makes one a disciple ; (5) Such a
profession was deemed sufficient in the times of the
Apostles.+

The principle upon which all the Scottish divines
who deal with this question proceed is a strictly and
severely logical one, namely, that the notes of a
visible Church must all be visible. If the distinction
of visible and invisible is to be maintained in the
doctrine of the Church it must constantly be re-
membered that what is invisible is accidental to
the one, and that what is visible is accidental to
the other. Only invisible grace is essential to the
one and only visible profession is essential to the pre
Possibly Rutherfurd pressed the consequences of this
distinction too far. I cannot help feeling that he
did not consider so carefully as Brown did the part
which the individual conscience must play in a
profession of any kind. So persistently did he follow
up the idea of the purely external character o
membership in the visible Church that he did not
scruple to say that the civil authority might and
should compel men to enter the membership. ‘‘ Now
seeing,” he writes, “time, favour of men, prosperity

1 Contra Wolzogium et Velthusium, Praefatio, Sect. 8.

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 81

accompanying the gospel, bring many into the Church,
so the magistrate may compel men to adjoin them-
selves to the true Church.”! In another work and in
another connection he argues that religion in the
sense of a saving acceptance of Christ cannot be
compelled “by the dint and violence of the sword,”
but that negatively the magistrate may and should
punish acts of false worship in those that are under
the Christian Magistrate and profess Christian Re-
ligion.” And by a somewhat singular casuistry he |
adds that the magistrate “‘does not command these
outward performances as service to God, but rather
forbids the omissions of them as destructive to man; |
he may punish omissions of hearing the doctrine of
the gospel and other external performances of worship, |
as these omissions, by ill example or otherwise, are
offensive to the souls of those that are to lead a quiet
and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” ? |
It is evident that Rutherfurd could thus persuade |
himself of the righteousness of compulsion by the |
magistrate because he believed that one who was |
prevented saying anything against the Christian faith |
and peremptorily made to attend the preaching of |
the gospel was, by external performances which he

1 A Peaceable and Temperate Plea, p. 111.

2 A Free Disputation against pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 51.
(‘Carnal weapons are not able, yea, nor were they ever appointed of ©
God, to ding down strongholds, nor can they make a willing people
. . . the sword is no means of God to force men positively to external
worship ; but the sword is a means negatively to punish acts of false |
worship. The magistrate does not command religious acts as service |
to God, but rather forbids their contraries as disservice to Christian |
societies,” pp. 50-52.] \

F

82 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

was not allowed to omit, constituted a member of the
visible Church.

There is a difference between the earlier and the
later Scottish doctrine of Church membership. The
difference may be seen in the most convincing and
interesting manner when we place side by side the
twelfth chapter of Rutherfurd’s Peaceable Plea, the
title of which is put in the form of a question:
“Whether or no do some warrantably teach that
Baptism should be administered only to infants born
of one at least parent known to be a believer and
within the covenant, and who are to be admitted to
the Lord’s Supper?” and Boston’s Sixth Question in
the Miscellames, entitled, “Who have right to

Baptism and are to be baptised?” }

- Rutherfurd begins the answer to his question by
calling attention to the distinction between an inherent
and a covenant holiness, which latter simply gives a
right to the means of salvation; and then to the
further distinction between those who are in the
covenant by faith in Christ, according to the election
of grace, and those who are there by profession as
hearers of the word and members of the visible
Church. He distinguishes a holiness of the nation
or people from a holiness of the single person, a
federal or covenant holiness de jure, such as goes
before baptism in the infants born in the visible
Church and a holiness de facto, a formal holiness
after they are baptised. He maintains that the sins

1 Miscellany Questions, 1767, p. 410.

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 83

of the immediate parents cannot exclude their children
from the mercy of the covenant or from the seals of
that mercy. He proceeds further to show how the
seed of those who are within the covenant is
differentiated from the seed of those outside the
covenant by the enjoying of God’s promise to be the
God of the seed of His people, and by the assurance
that the branches will be regarded as holy which
spring from a holy root. He argues that the
objection that only the infants of those who are in
communion with some particular Church or congrega-
tion have a right to baptism proceeds from a wrong
statement of the difference between Church com-

munion and Christian communion. According to
Rutherfurd, Christian communion carries with it the
privilege of baptism. ‘“‘ Baptism,” he says, “is not
like Burgess freedom in a city. A man may be a free

citizen in one town or city and not be such to have
right to the privileges of all other cities; but he who

is Christ’s freeman in one Church hath Christian free-
dom and right to communion thereby in all Churches.”

To all, therefore, who have Christian communion, that is,

to all who are in the widest sense within the covenant,

the privilege of the seal of the covenant belongs. Just
as all were circumcised who were born of circumcised
parents within the Church of the Jews, so all are to be |
baptised who are born of Christian and baptised parents
professing the faith. The text (1 Cor. vii, 14) which |
speaks of the unbelieving husband or wife and seems

to require believing on the part of one parent if the

84 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

children are not to be unclean, he explains by regarding
the unbelieving parent as a pagan or an unconverted
Jew. The condition of covenant holiness for the chil
dren is simply that at least one parent be a Chris
tian by profession, a hearer of the word of the Gospel.

While Rutherfurd contended for this wideness in
the administering of baptism, he was very far from
favouring any laxity of practice in regard to ad-
mission to the full communion of the Church by
participation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
When it is a matter of admitting to the Communion
Table he insists that only those are to be received of
whom we judge that they are capable of examining
themselves and have actually done so, that they can
discern the Lord’s body, and in the acting of faith
show the Lord’s death. This, he observes, at once
debars infants and children, ignorant and scandalously
flagitious persons, and insane people. The Lord’s
Supper is a seal of spiritual growth in Christ, presup-
posing faith and the new birth, so that to the openly
profane and unbelieving it is not a necessary nor a
possible means of salvation, for the elements are no
more nourishing to an unbeliever than bread and wine
would be to a dead man. But even in regard to the
ordinance of the Supper, Rutherfurd is careful to
declare that he does not make evidence of conversion
a condition of admission. And so the Church passes
no judgment on any man’s spiritual state, but only on
his visible profession and outward walk. Church
officers may not seek to go beyond Apostles who

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 85

received Ananias and Sapphira, Demas, Hymenzeus
and Alexander, having them for a space in the com-
munion of the Church, until they themselves went out
of it, showing that they were not of it.

Turning now to Boston, we find him assuming an
attitude utterly opposed to that of Rutherfurd. In
his time a cold formalism had spread widely over the
Church. The boundaries between the Church and the}
world were broken down. Many of the more spiritual
men of that age, from among whom sprang the Marrow
men, and those who sympathized with them, recoiled
from the undisguised worldliness of the visible Church,
and applied what had formerly been referred to it to
the company of visible belzevers. All who were not |
Turks or Pagans or Jews had been called Christians, |
so that Boston could speak of openly wicked Chris- |
tians, profane and grossly ignorant Christians. Now |
he raises the question whether those who could claim |
only the negative qualification of not being Turks or '
Jews or Pagans should have the right, in foro ecclesvae,
of baptism for their children. Boston quotes from
Zanchius,' a distinguished Calvinistic divine of the
latter half of the sixteenth century. In his large
doctrinal commentary on Ephesians he had main-
tained that in determining who are to be baptized
the impiety of the nearest relatives is not to be con-
sidered, but the piety of the Church in which they

1(“The first parcel of books I got added to my small library, was in
the year 1702. . . . Among these were Zanchy’s works, and Luther on
the Galatians, which I was much taken with.” Memoirs, Period viii.,
1700-1707.]

86 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

are born, as also that of their ancestors who have
lived godly or holily. Bowles, Fullwood, and Baxter
had all spoken in a similar strain. Boston summarises
their arguments under eight heads. He does this in
a style that might serve as an object lesson to modern
controversialists. | Without note or comment or even
a single interjected critical remark he presents the
arguments of the ablest defenders of this thesis with
all possible fulness and force as though he were stating
his own position. In form the arguments are mostly
those of English and Continental divines of the strictly
Calvinistic school. It is indeed rather remarkable
that throughout his long and elaborate discussion of
the subject of baptism, Boston does not once name
-Rutherfurd, although he shows his familiarity with
his writings by quoting him freely in treatises on
repentance and forgiveness. But in substance the
arguments quoted by Boston are just those relied upon
by Rutherfurd. Having stated them he proceeds to
give reasons why he cannot accept them. He argues
that on the principles professed by such divines even
unbaptized parents may have baptism for their chil-
dren, as also those whose ancestors for generations
may have been known to have been grossly ignorant
and profane, so that the God in whose name the infant
is to be baptized is a God whom neither they nor
their fathers have known. It would give right of
baptism to children of some Pagans and Mohammedans
whose remote ancestors may have been Christians. If
the principle of regarding children from the standpoint

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 87

of their remote ancestry be consistently carried out,
no children under heaven could be denied the ordin-
ance. From this reductio ud absurdum Boston
concludes that children derive their right to baptism
not from their progenitors, but only from their im-
mediate parents. His own position is expressed in;
the following propositions: (1) the children’s right
to privileges coram ecclesiae rests in the same person
or persons by whom they fall. (2) The children of |
the promise are those whose parents have repented.
(3) God’s threatening of punishment to the third
and fourth generation of those who hate Him implies
that each successive generation is ungodly. (4) That
the children are unclean unless either the husband is
sanctified by the believing wife or the wife by the
believing husband shows that they derive their right
to baptism from their immediate parents. (5) Chil-/
dren of ungodly parents as a cursed seed have no\
right to the seals of the covenant. Having thus |
cleared the way, Boston proceeds to discuss the ques-
tion as to what qualifications are necessary in parents in
order that they may claim from the Church the baptism
of their children. He at once lays down the position
that no children but such as have at least one parent
a visible believer have any right to baptism before the
Church. He casts ridicule upon every other interpreta-
tion of the phrase “born within the Church,”?! and)

1[“The promise is made to believers and their seed, and the seed
and posterity of the faithful, born within the Church, have by their birth,
interest in the covenant, and right to the seal of it.” Westminster
Directory for Publick Worship.]

88 THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND

adduces an argument in favour of his own position
under ten heads.

In carrying on his argument Boston is brought
face to face with the question as to whether any
difference should be made in regard to the qualifica-
tions for the Lord’s Supper and for Baptism. We
have seen how emphatically Rutherfurd insisted that
a distinction should be made, and that many who
must be rejected from partaking of the Lord’s Supper
might have a right to have baptism administered to
their children. Boston, on the other hand, maintains
that if the parents have no right to the table of the
Lord then their infants have none to the ordinance
of baptism. A distinction had been made between
a jus ad rem and a jus in re. Thus Israelites as
‘such had a right to the Passover, but if unclean
they were debarred from enjoying the right. So
some are habitually scandalous and have never
given probable evidence of sincerity, but others have
at one time given such evidence, though they have
fallen into scandal. To these latter, even although —
they have not yet given evidence of repentance,
Boston was willing to allow the right of baptism.
He distinguished a visible state from a visible frame,
and attached the right of baptism to the former. It
might be said indeed that children have a right of
their own; but evidence of that right before the
Church is only from the parents. And so, although
the child of a profane parent may have the Spirit
and thus have this right before the Lord, he has no

MEMBERSHIP IN IT 89

visible right, and, therefore, none before the Church
until he is able to manifest it by his own life and
profession.

Finally, Boston urges the practical advantages
that attend the working out of his theory of Church
membership. If profane parents, who are often
anxious to obtain baptism for their children, are
granted the privilege they are likely to be hardened
in their impiety, and the Church is mocked by vows
taken without serious intention of fulfilling them ;
whereas, if they are debarred, it may bring them to
the performance at least of the external duties of
religion, and even to the exercise of true faith and
repentance. In regard also to the children themselves
when they come to understand how their parents
have lived, and that notwithstanding they had ob-
tained baptism for them, they will be inclined to
despise religion as an unreal thing; whereas refusal
of baptism for their parents’ wickedness may lead
them to serious thought of God and spiritual things.
‘And even upon others, especially those beginning
family life, the effect will be most salutary if they
know that it is really expected of those who receive
the privilege that they be true believers and so
qualified for traming their children by word and life
for God.

Rutherfurd and Boston were led to their respective
and conflicting theories of the Church and member-
ship in it by their evangelical sympathies and their
longings for the salvation of sinners. To Rutherfurd

90 IDEA OF THE CHURCH AND MEMBERSHIP IN IT

it seemed that the hearing of the word was so great
a privilege, marking off a highly favoured class from
those who did not hear because they had no preacher.
Those who availed themselves of this privilege enjoyed
therein already the calling of God. When God so
favoured them it was surely the part of Church officers,
who are labourers together with God, to treat them
as within the circle of their care, and by the means
of grace to endeavour that that calling should become
to them effectual.

Boston’s protest was against formalism and indiffer-
ence. If hearing is not mixed with faith, of what
avail is it? It was the agonized cry of a man yearn-
ing after reality. Men seemed to lull themselves
into security and a false peace, and as mere hearers
without faith, they sought to satisfy themselves, and
even boasted that they were the temple of the Lord.
Boston thought to give them a rude awaking. They
are not of God’s Church at all. Until they believe
their place is with the pagans and the infidels. Was
there not a note of impatience here? Rutherfurd
would not shut them out until, like Simon Magus,
Demas, the Antichrists who vexed St John, they
went out of themselves by doing something that
afforded visible evidence that they were not of

God.

LECTURE III.
CHURCH UNITY—THE SIN OF SCHISM.

Our Scottish divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries had a singularly high and clear conception
of the unity of the Church. The visible Church was
with them the Church catholic. Melville, Ruther-
furd, Brown, Gillespie, Durham, and all the rest,
though their whole lives were spent in protests against
ceremonial impositions and doctrinal defections, re-
iterate and emphasize the statement that the whole
visible Church is one. They were scrupulous enough
and watchful against any sort of connivance in acts of
worship which they thought idolatrous, or in expres-
sions of doctrine which they regarded as false; but in
no case could they tolerate the idea of breaking away
from the communion of the Catholic Church. They
had a way of distinguishing between separation in and
separation from the Church to which we shall after-
wards advert. Meantime we shall look a little more
particularly at the manner in which they express their
doctrine of the catholicity of the visible Church.

It is interesting to observe the earnest way in
which the Scottish Covenanters, so often maligned for
their intolerance, and held up to public ignominy as

the very incarnation of obscurantist narrowness, insist
91

92 CHURCH UNITY

upon the universality of the Church, and the oneness
of all, in every place and under all names, who love
the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Historians and
literary men have talked and still talk in their ignor-
ance of our great Scotsmen—Knox, Melville, Hender-
son, Rutherfurd, Boston—as if their conduct, their
thinking and their writing were so hopelessly provin-
cial that the very mention of their names in those
enlightened days required an apology. With certain
popular writers of the day, some of whom at least wish
, to pass for serious historians, animus against the whole
class of reformers and covenanters is boasted of as
though these were the indispensable conditions for the
writing of a fair and reliable history. Those who do
this, or those who applaud their so-called histories,
are always eager to find out in works which record
facts unpalatable to them, instances of what may
seem prejudice against their heroes and in favour of
those whom they calumniate. I could easily enu-
merate sober, impartial historians who tell the actual
truth about these men and their times. But I feel
that I would serve the cause of truth better if I could
persuade students to read for themselves and at first
hand the works of these great men. It is a serious,
but by no means impossible, task. I have said in my
first lecture that there is much in the form of these
writings that is repulsive, and I have showed you that
not only are the printing and paper and exterior of the
volumes fitted to cause irritation, but that there is
much in the composition, plan, and arrangement of

THE SIN OF SCHISM 93

most of heir productions that no modern reissue of
them could make them popular or even generally
readable. Still, anyone who will brace himself to the
task will find it profitable and informing. He will
rise from it with a new conception of the character of
his ecclesiastical forefathers, with a fairer and more
intelligent appreciation of their qualities of head
and heart, he will know them as liberal and wise,
combative and uncompromising only in the interests
of truth and righteousness .

In the doctrine of the Church they were not, as we
are often told they were, insularly Scotch. National
or particular Churches—those of Scotland, of England,
of France, and so on—were simply provinces of a
ereat empire, the universal visible Church of God on
earth. They were not regarded as so many species
belonging to one genus, but they were parts of an
integral whole—totum integrale—so that the qualities
that were essential in the whole were essential in each
part. Hence any ecclesiastical action of a particular
or national Church was regarded as the action of the
universal visible Church.1_ Brown of Wamphray sets

1 [“The visible Church, in the idea of the Scottish theologians, is
catholic. You have not an indefinite number of Parochial, or Congre-
gational, or National Churches, constituting, as it were, so many
ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic, of which
these various organisations form a part. The visible Church is not a
genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. It is thus you may
think of the State, but the visible Church is a totwm integrale, it is an
empire. The Churches of the various nationalities constitute the
provinces of this empire ; and though they are so far independent of

each other, yet they are so one, that membership in one is membership
in all, and separation from one is separation from all... . This con-

94 CHURCH UNITY

forth this view with admirable completeness, and with
wonderful conciseness, in two small pages of a work
already referred to.1

To this universal visible Church, with the oracles
and institutions committed to it, Christ has given the
ministry for the purpose of the gathering together and
perfecting of the saints from among men, to the end
of the world. And as this ministry is one, so also the
Church is one. It is simply by accident, because all
cannot be gathered together in one place, that several
particular churches came to be formed. Whosoever,
therefore, is a member in any one of these particular
churches, in communion with it in the worship. of
God, is in the communion of the catholic visible
Church. Rutherfurd and others of his school linger
fondly over this point, and Brown gives more space
to the reiteration of this statement than to anything
else in the section of his controversial treatise de-
voted to the subject, evidently impressed with a sense
of its practical importance. Members of the visible
Church catholic or universal might be members of the
Church of Scotland because they were born, and had
lived, in Scotland. Had they been born in France
and lived there, they would have been members of
the Church of France. But if a member of that
Church came to Scotland, he would be recognised as
ception of the Church, of which, in at least some aspects, we have
practically so much lost sight, had a firm hold of the Scottish theologians
of the seventeenth century.” Dr James Walker in The Theology of

Theologians of Scotland. Lecture iv. pp. 95-6.]
1 Contra Wolzogiwm et Velthusiwm. Preefatio, § 23.

THE SIN OF SCHISM 95

a Church member; and a member of the Church of
Scotland in France would expect to be received of
right as a member there. This shows how far from
the principles of our covenanting fathers those have
strayed who regard their communion table not as that
of the universal or catholic Church, not even as that
of the national Church, but simply as that of their
denomination, to which none are to be received who
do not join their particular communion. Brown and
Rutherfurd would have denounced such as sectaries
and separatists.

The same principle applies to membership through
baptism. If any one has been solemnly received into
the membership of a particular church by baptism, he
is thereby admitted, not merely into that particular
church, but into the membership of the universal
visible Church.1' Indeed it is into the membership
of that universal Church that the child is admitted by
baptism primarily and according to the order of nature.
Hence, not only those who are joined together in one
particular church, but all the members of all churches
are brethren. They are all partakers of one and the
same calling, and all have been received into the same
outward covenant. The same gospel, with its pro-
mises, is offered to all.

From this it follows that there is to be no re-

1 [“The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the
gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of

all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together
with their children.” Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. xxv.

§ 11]

96 CHURCH UNITY

baptizing. It ought to be remembered that in the
history of the Church this question of rebaptizing
proved one of the highest importance. It has been
intimately connected with the question of Church
unity with which we are now dealing. In Cyprian’s
time it was universally admitted that baptism should
not be repeated. The only question that arose at this
point was as to whether there had been any really
valid baptism, a baptism worthy of the name. There
were but two essential conditions to a valid baptism :
it must be in the name of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, and it must be administered in a communion
recognised as a branch of the Church of Christ. And
it was on this question of what bodies are to be
recognised as churches that Cyprian was led to con-
struct his theory of the unity of the Church as a
community bound together by an outward and
visible bond, which has had such a mighty influence
on the development of the papal claims.1

1 [“The Bishop is the fountain of authority and centre of union in
the Christian Church. The Bishop, the representative of the apostolic
office, or the representative of Christ, within his own diocese, is the
bond of life and order and unity in the Christian society. Such is the
idea ‘first formally, perhaps, exhibited in the so-called Epistles of
Ignatius, and more fully brought out in the writings of Cyprian. . . .
The Pseudo-Ignatian and Cyprianic theory of the Church could only
find its complete and consistent development in the Romish doctrine
of one visible catholic society and one supreme head, under which all
the inferior societies and authorities of a visible Episcopacy might
unite. And hence the doctrine of the hierarchy embodied in the
theory of Cyprian, grew, and was developed until it found its only
consistent and perfect expression in the system of the Church of Rome.’”
The Church of Christ, by Professor James Bannerman, D.D., vol. ii.
part iv., chap. iii. pp. 251-2.]

THE SIN OF SCHISM 97

Our Scottish theologians were so generous in their
conception of what constitutes a true church of
Christ that, keen as their antagonism to Rome of
necessity was, they did not seek to unchurch her,
or to treat her baptism as invalid. We might not
have been surprised had they scrupled as to whether
the priests of the Romish Church should be recog-
nised as ministers of the word. But here again
the recognition of the church in which they served
as a branch of the Church of Christ, notwith-
standing her manifold and grievous corruptions,
weighed so heavily with them that they did not
raise the question as to the validity of the orders
of the priests of Rome. So little disposed were
the divines of Scotland, and with them those of
the Reformed Churches generally, to question the
validity of baptism administered within any Christian
Church that they even declined to pronounce bap-
tism administered by a deposed minister invalid,
and rather introduced a distinction, useful though
somewhat fine, between a valed and a lawful baptism.
The action of the deposed minister and the conduct
of those receiving baptism at his hands was dis-
tinctly unlawful, but the baptism itself was valid,
and as such could not be ignored. In the application
of this distinction, however, they carefully restricted
themselves to the recognition of baptism administered
by those who had some claim to be recognised as men
ordained by the Church. Women and laymen, who

presumed, in accordance with Romish practice in cases
G

98 CHURCH UNITY

of emergency,’ to dispense the ordinance, were not
only themselves dealt with as profaners of the holy
sacrament, but their action was regarded as invalid
as well as unlawful. Any child who had received a
so-called baptism from a woman or a layman must be
presented in a regular way and receive baptism as a
child not yet baptised.

It should not indeed be overlooked that the Scottish
Confession of Faith of 1560 lays down two things as
requisite to true baptism: (1) That it be ministered
by lawful ministers, preachers of the Word, chosen
thereto by some Kirk, and (2) that it be ministered in
such elements and in such sort as God hath appointed.
Then it proceeds to declare that Papistical ministers
are no ministers of Christ Jesus, ‘‘ Yea (which is more
horrible) they suffer women, whom the Holy Ghost
will not suffer to teach in the congregation, to baptize,”
and also they adulterate the Sacrament by using oil,
salt, spittle, and such-like inventions of men.? And
so in theory they make Romish baptisms not only
unlawful but also invalid. In an exactly contem-
porary document, however, the First Book of Discipline,
drawn up by the same six Reformers, it is only enjoined

1 [* And quhensaever the tyme of neid chancis that the barne can
nocht be brocht conveniently to a preist and the barne be feivit to be
in peril of dede, than all men and women may be ministeris of Baptyme,
swa that quhen thai lay wattir apon the barne, with that, thai pronunce
the wordis of Baptyme intendand to minister that sacrament, as the
kirk intendis.” The Catechism of John Hamilton, 1552; The Sacra-
ment of Baptyme, the fourt cheptour.]

2 [Laing’s Knox, vol. ii. chap. xxii. pp. 115,116. Dunlop’s Collection,
vol, ii. pp. 84-86.]

THE SIN OF SCHISM 99

that the introducers of these inventions be punished.*
So far as appears, even from the beginning of the
Reformation in Scotland, the idea of the unity of the
Church so prevailed that even in regard to Romish
baptism, against which so much could be said, only its
lawfulness, but not its validity, was called in question.

The unity of the Church was further illustrated by
this, that pastors when they are ordained are clothed
with an office, not only in relation to those particular
churches over which they are appointed, but primarily
and in order of nature they are ordained in the Church
catholic, and in actu primo are pastors of the universal
visible Church. It was indeed emphatically declared
in the Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church-
Government and of Ordination of Ministers, approved
by the General Assembly of 1645, that, “It is agreeable
to the word of God, and very expedient, that such as
are to be ordained ministers be designed to some
particular church or other ministerial charge.” Yet
the ordination in itself is declared to be “the solemn
setting apart of a person to some publick church office”;
it is to the work of the ministry which, as we have
seen, is given by Christ to the catholic visible Church.

It was regarded by Rutherfurd as one of the great
offences of the sectaries, and at the same time a neces-
sary consequence of their erroneous idea, that the
Church consists simply of the body of believers

1 [Laing’s Knox, Uz sup. p. 187. Dunlop, Ut sup. p. 521. “Such as
would presume to alter Christ’s perfect Ordinance you ought severely
to punish.”]

100 CHURCH UNITY

meeting in one place, that they held that a minister
cannot labour pastorally except over those who have
called him, and that, should he be removed to another
flock, he must there be not only chosen but also
ordained anew. ‘This matter is argued against the
Independents by Rutherfurd in the seventeenth chapter
of his Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Pavl’s
Presbytery. The discussion there is very much about
the seat of Church power, and the writer insists upon
the distinction between the mystical and the ministerial
Church. It is from the ministry that any man receives
ordination, and the power bestowed is the same as
that of those who confer it, and is not limited by the
limitations of those who constitute the sphere to
which he is immediately designed. Hence a conere-
-gation’s forsaking of their minister by no means
deprives him of his ordination. It must be observed,
however, that in thus contending for the ecclesiastical
as distinguished from the congregational theory of the
ministry, Scottish theologians were not forgetful of
the fact that it is for the Church that the ministry
exists. It was just in consequence of their clear con-
ception of the doctrine of the unity of the Church that
our divines, holding that ordination is ordination to
office in the Church universal, consistently upheld the
view of the Reformers in opposition to that of the
Papists that a ministry may be valid although
irregular, that the observance of the ordinary rules
must give way if necessary to the edification and
well-being of the Church.

THE SIN OF SCHISM 101

Again, this doctrine of Church unity involved the
recognition by all churches of any disciplinary action
of any particular church. This was regarded by our
presbyterian fathers, not as a mere matter of inter-
ecclesiastical courtesy, but as a matter of right. It
was held that any offence which excluded one from
the communion of any particular church excluded him
from the communion of the whole Church. This, on
theory at least, is admitted by all, so that when we
find any disregarding it the ground on which they
proceed, if they are pressed to give a reason for their
conduct, is that they do not regard those who have
exercised such discipline as constituting a branch of
the Church of Christ. In short, no church can dis-
regard the excommunication or other acts of discipline
administered by any particular body until it has first
unchurched that body.

Our own Church fathers had so firm a grasp of the
doctrine of the unity of the Church that they would
recognise the disciplinary acts even of a corrupt
Church, if they were not exercised by the perpetuation
of those corruptions against which they protested.

In all these several cases then, our divines in Scot-
land recognised in a thoroughly generous spirit the
unity of the Church. The membership of baptised
persons, the communion of those received to the table
of the Lord, the orders of ministers regularly ordained
to the pastoral office, and acts of discipline adminis-
tered in particular churches were all conceived of by
them as of obligation throughout the Church universal.

102 CHURCH UNITY

The idea of the Church was to them no mere vague gener-
ality, but the visible kingdom of God on earth, in which
men of all nations and ranks had the gospel preached
to them and the means of salvation put into operation
on their behalf, in which all the members had the same
recognised rights, to which also in a very real sense all
the members of the particular churches belonged.

In regard to those particular churches which to-
gether constitute the one Catholic visible Church of
Christ very definite and discriminating opinions were
entertained. Brown of Wamphray refers to the fourth
and fifth sections of the twenty-fifth chapter of
the Westminster Confession, and adopts almost liter-
ally its admirable words :—‘“‘ This Catholick Church
hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible.
And particular churches, which are members thereof,
are more or less pure, according as the doctrine
of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances
administered, and publick worship performed more
or less purely in them. The purest churches under
heaven are subject both to mixture and error;
and some have so degenerated as to become no
churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Never-
theless, there shall be always a Church on earth to
worship God according to His will.” This clearly
raises the question as to what degree of impurity
would warrant Christian men in ceasing to recognise
a community of professing Christians as entitled to
be reckoned a branch of the Church of Christ. It is
evident that corruptions may so increase in a body

THE SIN OF SCHISM 103

that was once acknowledged as a church that it may
no longer be worthy of such a designation. In that
case separation from it not only becomes allowable,
it becomes a duty.

It is interesting to note how Rutherfurd, Brown,
Gillespie, Durham, and generally all the best men of
that school seek to multiply reasons against separation,
and show themselves willing to bear the heaviest
burdens and submit to the severest strain rather than
take what to them is the most painful step in separat-
ing from communion with any body with which they
had previously held church fellowship. Their dread
of separation was not based on any merely speculative
or abstract theorising. They had before them, in
history ancient and modern, abundant evidence of
its unhappy consequences. All these scholars were
intimately acquainted with the history of the Novatian
and Donatist schisms, and with all the deplorable
details of the mad fanaticism of the German Ana-
baptists. In the proceedings even of contemporaries
of their own, especially in England and New England,
they saw to what revolutionary issues this separatist
movement tended. Rutherfurd in particular had
made a careful study of the history and teaching of
the sectaries. He had met with some of them when
he was attending the Westminster Assembly, and his
Due Right of Presbyteries (1644) shows his fami-
larity with the writings of John Cotton and John
Robinson. Indeed the subject seems to have had a
wonderful fascination for him. He evidently regarded

104 CHURCH UNITY

the discussion as one of supreme importance for his
own Church during that unsettled period when so
many questions of an ecclesiastical description were
agitating the public mind. It appears that for at
least ten years the subject of separation in its causes
and effects was more or less prominently before him.
In 1648 he published a large and somewhat loosely
compiled exposure of the wilder theories of the ex-
tremer sects—A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist.
The leaders of the Reformed movement in Scotland
must have felt the danger of reaction among those
who had been oppressed by ecclesiastical tyranny, and
probably they had witnessed threatening movements
and had heard dangerous mutterings against all con-
stituted authority which made them tremble lest the
last state of their Church might be, if that were pos-
sible, worse than the first. The fourth part of
Durham’s work on scandal? is entitled Concerning
Scandalous Divisions, and here he distinguishes
between heresy, schism, and division. All these
are in different ways and degrees wounds of the unity
of the Church. ‘“‘ Heresy is some error in doctrine, and
that especially in fundamental doctrine, followed with
pertinacity and endeavour to propagate the same,’
whereby, as Hooker puts it, there is a loss of the bond
of faith. ‘Schism may be where no heresy in
doctrine is, but is a breaking of the union of the
Church, and that communion which ought to be
amongst the members thereof, and is either in govern-
1 [Vide Lecture I. p. 48.]

THE SIN OF SCHISM 105

ment or worship.” “Division doth not at the first
view differ from Schism,” but applies to such “ dis-
sensions in the Church as are consistent with com-
munion both in government and worship, and have
not a divided government or worship following them,
as in the former case.” It may be either doctrinal
or practical. Of the doctrinal sort “are the divisions
that may be amongst godly and orthodox men in
some points of truth, when they too vehemently press
their own opinion to be received with a kind of
necessity, or load the other with too many absurdities
beyond what will follow from the nature thereof” :
practical divisions ‘“‘do indeed imply some difference
of opinion, but do also infer somewhat in practice.”
Of this latter sort “was the division about Easter
in primitive times before it came to a Schism, some
keeping one day, some another.” These divisions
have often been between good men on both sides.
Durham instances the cases of Paul and Barnabas,
and of Chrysostom and Epiphanius. Such divisions
sometimes arise from “various and different appre-
hensions of truths that are less fundamental”; but
most frequently “they are occasioned by a carnal
and factious-like pleading for, and vindicating even
of truth.” The Glasgow theologian shows what
manner of spirit he was of by censuring Pope Stephen
for carrying his opposition to Cyprian so far as to
endanger the unity of the Church by refusing com-
munion to such as held with Cyprian that those who
were baptised by heretics or schismatics ought again

106 CHURCH UNITY

to be baptised. According to the writer on Scandal
no one should carry opposition even to an error like
that of Cyprian so far as to ‘‘ hazard the dividing and
rending of the Church.” And so he warmly commends
Cyprian, who, because of the regard which he had for
the unity of the Church, carried himself ‘“ meekly
and condescendingly.” When setting forth “the
height of evil that division bringeth,’ Durham is
led to observe that “although sometimes the fault
may be more on one side than another yet seldom is
any side free, at least in the manner of prosecution ;
and therefore often it turneth in the close to the hurt
of both. The one side becomes more schismatical
and erroneous, at least in many of their members :
the other side more cold and secure in the practice
of holiness, carnal and formal in pursuing ceremonies
and external things, with less affection and life in the
main, because the edge of their zeal is bended towards
these differences.”

In view of the terrible havoc wrought within and
without the Church by all such breaches of unity every
endeavour should be put forth to prevent a division
being made and to heal it when it has taken place.
‘‘ Never,” writes Durham in a noble passage that well
deserves to be quoted and pondered, “never did men
run to quench fire in a city, lest all should be destroyed,
with more diligence than men ought to bestir them-
selves to quench this in the Church; never did
mariners use more speed to stop a leak in a ship, lest
all should be drowned, than ministers especially, and

THE SIN OF SCHISM 107

all Christian men should haste to stop this beginning
of the breaking in of these waters of strife, lest there-
by the whole Church be overwhelmed. And if the
many evils which follow thereupon, the many com-
mands whereby union is pressed, yea, the many
entreaties and obtestations whereby the Holy Ghost
doth so frequently urge this upon all, as a thing most
acceptable to Him and profitable to us—if, I say, these
and many other such considerations have not weight
to convince of the necessity of this duty to prevent or
heal a breach, we cannot tell what can prevail with
men that profess reverence to the great and dreadful
Name of God, conscience of duty, and respect to the
edification of the Church and to their own peace at
the appearance of the Lord in the great day, wherein
the peace-makers shall be blessed, for they shall be
called the children of God?” ?

We shall, perhaps, best show how breaches of union
may be prevented by considering the teaching of
Scottish theologians as to what differences may exist
and continue without giving just ground for division,
or at least for refusing to maintain communion. And
here we ought to notice at once that our covenanting
forefathers, strict and even scrupulous as they were in
regard to ceremonies in worship which had not the
sanction of Holy Scripture, made the preaching of the
word the principal, and sometimes, it would seem,
almost the only absolutely indispensable note of the

1 Durham on Scandal, Edin. 1659, pp. 313 f. [Part IV. chap. vi. p.
288, edition 1680.]

108 CHURCH UNITY

true Church. Hence they refused to unchurch any com-
munion in which the word was preached, or to deny the
name of a true Church to any body in which Christ was
proclaimed as the Saviour, even though the proclama-.
tion might be very defective, and though it might be
accompanied with many additions of doctrine that
have no scriptural warrant, and with ceremonies which
they could only regard as idolatrous. And so, as we
shall see later on, and in fuller detail, they recognise
the church standing even of the Church of Rome.
Now if we only keep in mind the keenness of the opposi-
tion offered by these Reformers to the corruptions of
the Papacy we shall understand, on the one hand, how
strong their feeling was against causing any breach in
the unity of the Church, and, on the other hand, how
unhesitatingly they recognised the unique place which
the preaching of the word occupied in the Church, so
that where it was conserved the Church, in spite of all
disadvantages and disfigurements, continued to exist.’
Our sixteenth and seventeenth century theologians
clearly perceived that it is the preaching of the word,

11t is interesting to notice that in thus emphasising the importance
of the preaching of the word our Scottish divines haye the support of
some of the most learned and most advanced of modern German
theologians. ‘“God’s word,” says Lipsius, “cannot be without God’s
people ; where, therefore, the Gospel is rightly preached and the
Sacraments rightly administered, there in the presence of the outward
signs does faith mark also the invisible acting of God’s Spirit. The
regular presentation of the word in the widest sense is the one ordin-
ance of the Church which is of divine right. All other ordinances are
of human right and have nothing to do with the Christian Faith.” Die
Hauptpunkte der Christlichen Glaubenslehre im Umrisse dargestellt, Bruns-
wick, 1891, p. 36. Comp. also Lehrbuch der Evangelisch Protestanteschen
Dogmatik, Brunswick, 1876, pp. 820 f.

THE SIN OF SCHISM 109

the announcement of salvation which is the distinctive
message of that preaching, that forms the essential
principle of the Church. By the hearing of the word
men are made members of the visible Church, and by
the receiving in faith of the word heard they are made
members of the Church invisible. One great practical
advantage of their doctrine of the visible Church is
seen in the comprehensive view which it enabled them
to take of the function of the preacher. I have seen
it stated in some homiletical books that pastors of
congregations ought to address themselves mainly to
the edification of converted persons, that they ought to
assume that the members and adherents of the Church
are professedly, and in the judgment of charity re-
generate, so that evangelistic appeals to the sinner
can come only in by the way, be addressed, as it
were, to casuals or those who in our country are
called occasional hearers. But according to Scottish
theology the minister is the sower whose field is th

world, the visible Church, the members of which ar

simply hearers of the word, not necessarily distin

guished as regenerate persons. The protestant prin-
ciple of the unity of the Church, if intelligently held
and applied, demands that prominence be given to the
preaching of the word, inasmuch as that principle
signifies, not an organic unity, but simply that which
comes from the common presentation of the one
message of grace. It is not only unpresbyterian,
but it is antiprotestant to minimise, as in certain
quarters is presently the fashion, the importance of

110 CHURCH UNITY

the sermon in public worship. It rests upon a con-
ception of the Church entirely different from that of
our reforming forefathers, to wit that the unity of
the Church is to be found, not in the preaching of
the gospel, but in the observance of a certain litur-
gical order. By common preaching rather than by
common prayer the Church is one.

The leading theologians of Scotland found the
principle of distinguishing between the presence of
serious errors in a church, and the loss of all claims
in the part of that body to be regarded as a true
church, one of high practical value. On the strength
of that distinction they laid down the fandamental
position that while we must separate from all com-
munion wherein we cannot but sin, this may be
done without separating from the Church. There
may be a partial or negative separation, one, that is
to say, in regard to certain acts of public worship,
in which we could not without sin take part.
Rutherfurd gives as an example separation from an
idolatrous communion where the sacramental bread
is adored. The adoration of the material element
makes the table of the Lord an idol’s table; but
while we must separate from that service we are
not called upon totally or wholly to separate from
hearing of the word, or from the prayers and praises
of that errmg Church.

It is well that at this point we should note the
essential difference between the way in which our
Reformers and Covenanters speak of the Church of

THE SIN OF SCHISM ET

Rome and that in which Romanists and Anglicans
refer to them. The universal catholic Church of
Scottish Protestants embraces, as we have seen, all
communions in which the gospel is preached, but
that of Romish and Anglican churchmen consists only
of those communions whose constitution is hierarchical
and episcopal. Notwithstanding the attempts of ami-
able individuals in these Churches to express them-
selves in courteous and charitable terms towards those
outside their pale, high churchmen speaking oflicially
unchurch all other communions and treat them as sects
not churches. This is the immediate and inevitable
consequence of hierarchical principles. If the pre-
latic theory of the Church constitution be correct, if
the possession of such a constitution is of the essence
of the Church, then, of course, Presbyterians, estab-
lished or non-established, and Congregationalists are
members, not of the Church, but simply of societies
for certain religious purposes. The non-hierarchical
principles of the presbyterian Covenanters enabled
them, nay rather obliged them to maintain that this
belonged not to the essence of the Church, and that,
therefore, communities which were hierarchical in
principle and communities which were anti-hierarchical
in constitution might both alike be recognised as true
churches of Christ.

It is by no means unusual to hear our Scottish
Presbyterian Church spoken of as narrow and
sectarian, as advancing absolutist and exclusive
claims with all the arrogance and narrowness of

Ihe CHURCH UNITY

hierarchical Rome against which she protested. It
seems to me that this is an utterly false view of the
matter, and that it has arisen from failing to ap-
preciate and attend to the distinction to which
reference has been made, that namely between the
Church as a communion in which the word of God is
preached, and that same communion proclaiming and
practising errors, it may be of a very serious character.
With these errors orthodox presbyterians can have
no communion, but must protest against them and
separate themselves from them. Nevertheless, this
protest may not imply or necessitate a separation from
the Church. This distinction was a very real and
practical one. It enabled those who entertained it to
think and speak graciously and tenderly of individual
members of these churches which were most corrupt.
It allowed them to perceive and acknowledge the
presence of God’s grace in the lives of many who
along with fundamental doctrines joined much hay
and stubble in their building. They unchurched no
community which preaches Christ, not even Rome
which unchurched them, nor the Separatists who un-
churched them both. They repudiated the Romanist
assertion that all separated from Rome are like
withered branches severed from the tree; but they do
not make a similar claim on their own behalf by
asserting that those who separate from their com-
munion are thereby separated from the one fount of
life.

The charge of separation they threw back upon the

THE SIN OF SCHISM £13

Romish Church. “Rome,” says Samuel Rutherfurd,
“made the separation from the Reformed Churches
and not we from them, as the rotten wall maketh the
schism in the house, when the house standeth still
and the rotten wall falleth.” It was not Christianity
that they left in Rome, but the leprosy of popery
growing upon Christianity. They recognise too that
in all the ages there were in the Romish Church
representatives of evangelical truth, whose successors
they claimed to be; they did not separate from Rome’s
baptism, nor even from its ordination of pastors ac-
cording to the substance of the act, nor yet from the
articles of the Apostles’ Creed, nor from the contents
of the Old and New Testaments, but only from the
false interpretation of those who made themselves
lords over the faith and the consciences of men.
The English Separatists brought a charge against
Scottish Presbyterians that their ministers derived
their ordination from Rome. The leading Reformers,
they said, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Knox, all had
their orders from what they called antichrist, and so
ministers, receiving ordination from them, had their
calling from the same quarter. In answer to this
Rutherfurd, after the example of some of the best
continental divines, sets forth in detail the essential
grounds of the calling and ordination of the first
protestant Reformers. In their calling, he points out,
there was something immediately from God; they
were called to the ministry which is from Him. Then

1 [Peaceable and Temperate Plea, p. 122.]
H

114 CHURCH UNITY

by the papal Church they were designed and ordained
as pastors; and so, in the substance of it the act was
of God, and in so far as she had to do with it the
Church of Rome acted as a Christian Church. There
were, no doubt, antichristian ceremonies in the way
and manner in which the ordination was carried out,
and those thus appointed to the ministry had taken
an oath to maintain the doctrine and practice of the
Church of Rome. But this oath was essentially a
promise to defend the truth—the truth doubtless of
the Church as it then was—still always under the
notion of truth. And so, when by spiritual illumina-
tion, they saw and renounced the error of the Church
in their day, they still held the substance of their oath
as obligatory and binding on their conscience. If the
Roman Church were altogether antichristian, its
ordination could not be regarded as in any sense
conferring office in the Christian Church; a dead
man cannot beget a living child. But the Roman
Church was not like a dead man; it was like a sick
or deformed man. It was not wholly antichristian,
but kept some of Christ’s truth, and that which is
only in part antichristian may ordain ministers who
have the true essence of a ministerial calling.

A very important step was thus taken in the
direction of laying down a broad principle of Church
unity, when the validity of ordinances such as baptism
and ordination, which respectively admit to member-
ship and office, was expressly recognised when ad-
ministered in communities which had anything of

THE SIN OF SCHISM 115

Christ in them. It is very much to the credit of our
Scottish Presbyterians that they did not unchurch any
community in which Christ was not altogether denied
or ignored. And in regard to this they are all heartily
agreed—not only Rutherfurd, Brown, and Durham,
but even those Society men, Cameron, Cargill, Ren-
wick, the authors of the Informatory Vindication,
and the Rutherglen, Sanquhar and Lanark Declara-
tions, men often represented as irreconcilables, ex-
clusive, sectarian, and impracticable.

Some might be disposed to treat the declarations of
Scottish Separatists as mere theorisings which were
very glaringly contradicted by their practice. The
Cameronians, Macmillanites, and the Society men
generally, who claimed to represent the true Church
of Scotland, were vehemently denounced as sectaries
and charged with schismatical division, with recklessly,
or at least needlessly rending the unity of the Church.
There was no charge in regard to which they were
more sensitive. There was no statement more per-
sistently reiterated by them than this that the
unity of the Church was most dear to them, that
nothing was more abhorrent to them than the giving
of any occasion to separation and the forming of sects.
And that this was no mere sentiment, but the honest
conviction of their hearts is shown by their generous
recognition of the Church standing of all communities
in which Christ was preached, to which we have just
called attention, and also by the way in which they
set themselves to explain how it came about that,

116 CHURCH UNITY

notwithstanding their appreciation of Church unity,
they nevertheless refused to hold communion with
many whose Church membership they acknowledged. ,
In the first place they show in detail what errors and
shortcomings they regard as insufficient to warrant
separation ; and then what faults and corruptions are
of such a nature as to justify and necessitate separa-
tion. We have already seen that they laid down the
broad principle that they might and ought to separate
only when their failing to do so could involve them
in sin. We must now consider what they say
in regard to that patient forbearance which must
be exercised by members of the Church in order
that they may be free from the charge of causing
scandalous and sinful divisions.

Durham, in dealing with this subject, premises
that there is no division among orthodox divines and
Christians which may not be composed or healed, so
as to make union possible. So, in endeavouring to
bring about healing we must not insist upon agree-
ment in every detail. Room must be made for many
differences both in judgment and in practice. There
may be differences of opinion with reference to persons,
whether officers or members; but to break away on
that account would be to expect that the barn-floor
should be without chaff. There may be defects in
government, such as the sparing of corrupt officials
and members, and even the unjust censuring of the
guiltless, or the admission of the unfit to the ministry,
yet these will not excuse schism and division. As

THE SIN OF SCHISM ELT

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea continued in the
Jewish council, discountenancing the corrupt acts of
their colleagues, so it is the duty of Christian men to
remain in the Church even when seriously defective,
dissenting and protesting against her defections. It
may also be necessary to maintain communion not-
withstanding defects in worship, measures of govern-
ment and rules necessary for the management of the
Church. So we find the Apostle urging the duty of
union most strongly upon the members of the Church
at Corinth, where many irregularities of worship and
conduct prevailed. All such defects are to be remedied
not by division but by union.

In seeking to determine more exactly what the
defects are which should be put up with rather than
to withdraw from Church communion, Durham lays
down these six rules or considerations. “(1) What
cannot warrant a breach where there is union, that
cannot warrantably be the ground to keep up a
division. Making up of a breach is no less a duty
than preventing thereof ; the continuing thereof is but
the continuing in the same sin. (2) Such defects as do
not make communion in a Church and in its ordin-
ances sinful, will not warrant a separation or division
from the same. There is no separation from a true
Church in such ordinances as men may without sin
communicate in, although others may be guilty
therein. (3) Men may keep communion with a Church
when their calling leadeth them thereto upon the one
side and they have access to the discharge of the same

118 CHURCH UNITY

upon the other.” A minister, for example, must
follow the duties of his calling ‘‘ whilst there is no
physical or moral impediment barring him in the
same and others being defective in their duty will not
absolve him from his, which he oweth by virtue of his
station. (4) While the general rules tending to edifi-
cation, in the main, are acknowledged, union is to be
kept, even though there be much failing in the appli-
cation. (5) There may and ought to be uniting when
the evils that follow division or schism are greater
and more hurtful to the Church than the evils that
may be supposed to follow in union.” He speaks not
of the “ills of sin, for the least of these are never to
be chosen, but of evils and inconveniences that may
~ indeed be hurtful to the Church in themselves, and
sinful in respect of some persons, yet are not so to all.
In such evils the lesser is to be chosen.” Under this
rule Durham utters many wise sayings. One sentence
well deserves to be quoted and remembered. “ The
ills of division are most inevitable, for the ills that
follow union, through God’s blessing may be pre-
vented, it is not impossible ; but in the way-of division
it is because itself is out of God’s way. (6) When men
may unite without personal guilt or accession to the
defects or guilt of others, there may and ought to be
union, even though there be failings and defects of
several kinds in a Church.’ Under this rule the
author recognises three impediments such as “a
tender conscience may be justly scared by from
uniting. (1) Ifa person be put to condemn anything

THE SIN OF SCHISM 119

he thinketh lawful in his own former practice, or the
practice of others, or in some point of doctrine though
never so extrinsic, if it be to him a point of truth.
(2) If he be put to approve the deed and practice of
some others which he accounteth sinful, or to affirm
somewhat as truth which he doth account an error.
(3) When some engagement is required for the future
which doth restrain from any duty called for, or that
may afterwards be called for.”

In order to find examples from the life and practice
of the early Church to enforce and commend forbear-
ance towards the weaker and faultier on the part of
the stronger and sounder, Durham and his associates
drew upon their stores of patristic learning. Tor a
Council or Assembly to rescind a decision against a
party without having received any satisfaction or
acknowledgment of fault from that party cannot be
an easy thing. And yet Augustine tells us how the
bishops of Spain who had condemned Hosius,? did, on
his acquittal by the French, fall from their first
sentence lest they might cause a schism. Then
Durham refers with warm and hearty approval to the
conduct of the Church in bringing the Meletian schism
to a close. In a.p. 361 two bishops were appointed
to Antioch, Meletius and Paulinus. Although the
prime movers in the appointments had been impelled
by the supposed attitude of the rival bishops it was
found that both were orthodox, and so their rival

1 [Concerning Scandal, Part iv. chap. vii.]
+ [Bishop of Cordova in Spain, member of the Council of Nice in 325.]

120 CHURCH UNITY

government and separate congregations were a serious
scandal to the Church. Meletius made overtures in
the interests of peace, proposing that Paulinus and he
should be joint bishops, and that after the death of
either the survivor should be sole possessor of the see.
Paulinus, on the plea that his ordination was more in
accordance with the ecclesiastical canons than that of
Meletius, refused to acquiesce in the proposal. Ac-
cordingly he was accounted unworthy to govern such
a church and was set aside, while Meletius, because
of his consideration for church unity, was invested
with the sole episcopal rank and government.

In a little book published anonymously, but now
known to have been written by Bishop Gilbert Burnet,
entitled A Modest and Free Conference between a
— Conformist and Nonconformist,! the Conformist,- in
answer to a statement of the Nonconformist that he
will not quit one truth for the love of all men, ac-
knowledges that if required to renounce what we judge
the truth we must obey God rather than man, but
declares that it is another thing to quit the communion
of the Church because its teaching, according to our
thinking, is not according to the truth, unless that
truth denied in the Church is of greater importance
than the articles of our creed, “the holy Catholick
Church, the communion of saints.”

To this M‘Ward,? in his True Nonconformst :

1 [A Modest and Free Conference between a Conformist and Nonconformist,
in seven Dialogues. Glasgow, 1669.]

2 [There are almost endless variations in the spelling of the name of
this worthy Scot. Baillie, for example, has M‘quard, Makquard,

THE SIN OF SCHISM 121

Answere to the Conference (1671), replies that no true
Nonconformists think they may quit the communion
of the Church unless the difference be both real and
in profession and practice, and also that it is not every
real difference in these things they hold to be a suffi-
cient cause of separation, nor do they hold that even
where the cause is sufficient should separation always
be carried to an extremity. On the contrary, says
M‘Ward, the sound and clear rule in the matter of
church practice is that where the controverted differ-
ence is such as would render a conjunction therein
either sinful or contagious, there a just and propor-
tionate separation, precisely and with all tenderness
commensurate to the exigence, is the safer course.

In the Informatory Vindication, written, as is
supposed by Renwick somewhere about 1686, all those
belonging to the Societies disown a separation from
communion with the Church of Scotland in her doc-
trine, worship, discipline, and government as she was
in her purest and best days, and only oppose the

Macquare, M‘Quare. In Wodrow’s History he figures as M‘Vaird ; in
the Analecta as Macwaird, and in the Correspondence as M‘Ward. Robert
M‘Ward, a Regent in the College, and afterwards a minister in the City
of Glasgow, was ejected at the Restoration, retired to Holland, and died
an exile in December 1681.]

1[“An Informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented
remnant of the Suffering, Anti-popish, Anti-prelatic, Anti-erastian,
Anti-sectarian, true Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland, united
together in a General Correspondence. By way of reply to various
Accusations, in Letters, Informations, and Conferences, given forth
against them.” This tractate was the most important of all the docu-
ments issued by the “United Societies” formed at the close of 1681,
and the germ of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland. It
was in the main the composition of James Renwick.]

122 CHURCH UNITY

errors and defections of that Church and endeavour to
separate from these. It is also clearly shown what
things are regarded as insufficient to warrant the with-
drawing from ministers even in this covenanted land,
and then what the grounds are which justify and
necessitate such withdrawal. Infirmities, whether
natural, spiritual, or moral, sins of ignorance, differ-
ences of judgment in things indifferent in themselves,
controversial points not condemned or witnessed
against by our Reformers, and even scandals not
attended with obstinacy, but confessed and forsaken—
all these are set forth as matters in regard to which
forbearance must be exercised, and as differences
which do not warrant separation. On the other
hand, they refuse to hold communion with those
who have no rightful call to preach—priests whose
mission is from Antichrist, curates who have their
calling from the episcopal hierarchy, and gifted
brethren whose call is only from the people. They
also feel that they are justified in refusing to hold
communion with all who had laid aside their ministry
or had taken it again at the bidding of a usurping
authority, including all those who had taken the
indulgence, refusing fellowship also with all who had
allowed themselves to be silenced, and who had been
lurking or in hiding in time of persecution, as well as
all who had not preached against the sins of the
times, or shown any degree of sympathy with the
public enemies of the covenanted remnant. This list,
which in the manifesto is set forth in abundant ampli-

THE SIN OF SCHISM £23

tude of detail, certainly seems to embrace all ranks
and classes in the land outside of the small handful
that issued it. And so its authors have been most
severely criticised as an impracticable, over-scrupulous
set of irreconcilables, who recklessly and wantonly
attacked and unchurched all who did not belong to
their own little covenanted circle. Such sweeping
charges betoken, in my judgment, a singular want of
knowledge of the character of the men, a lamentable
failure to appreciate the difficulty of the situation in
which they were placed, and the delicate nature of the
questions which they had to discuss. Their position
was very similar to that of the faithful in the third
and fourth centuries, after the early Christian perse-
cutions, when they had to consider their attitude
towards those who had been in varying degrees un-
faithful—the Sacrificers, the Incensers, and the Certifi-
cated,! as the lapsed were designated. The subsequent
course of church history in Scotland showed how much
cause they had to dread reunion with Conformists
even of the least aggressive type. It really was not
in theory but in practice that those high-principled,
self-denying men came short of the full maintenance
of the doctrine of the unity of the Church. It is,
doubtless, much easier to see two hundred years later
than it was in the day of blood and terror, how the

1 [Sacrificatores, Thurificatores, Libellatici. The last-named class con-
sisted of those who purchased certificates from corrupt magistrates, in
which it was declared that they were pagans, and had complied with
the demands of the law.]

124 CHURCH UNITY

right rules of the persecuted remnant might have been
logically carried out. It was easier even for Boston
than for Renwick to show how the antischismatic
principles of the Covenanters might be adhered to in
the strictest and most literal fashion. For the Church
of Scotland in Boston’s time, with all its defects, and
these were such as made Boston himself suffer severely,
was distinctly more hospitable to men with views like
his than that of the earlier period. And hence, al-
though Boston’s sermon on Schism,’ in which he
vigorously taxes the Society men of his time with
that offence, may seem to be more in the spirit of
Rutherfurd than in that of Renwick, I am not sure
but it is one which Renwick, had he survived so
long, would have been quite prepared to preach.
There was certainly an excuse, perhaps also a
justification for Renwick’s position which the later
Cameronians could not plead for theirs.”

1 [The text was 1 Cor. i. 10: “Now I beseech you, brethren, that
there be no divisions among you.” It was directed against John
Macmillan and John Macneill, “the two preachers of the separation,”
as Boston styles them. Several times reprinted, it is in the seventh
vol. of his collected works.]

2 [In the course of his analysis of the Informatory Vindication, the
Rev. Mr Hutchison refers to the charge brought against its compilers of
being schismatics, a charge, he says, they were well able to repel. “They,”
he goes on to remark, “still regarded themselves as a part of the his-
toric Church of Scotland, and were wont to speak of it as the poor, torn,
and bleeding mother. ... They claim that they have not left the
Church. . . . The declining and corrupt part has left them ; they are
separating only as refusing to follow in this evil course. . . . They did
not claim to be a Church, but only fellowship societies of private
Christians meeting together for mutual edification and strengthening,
and having no idea of forming a separate Church.” The Reformed
Presbyterian Church in Scotland, chap. iii. sect. iii. pp. 75, 76.]

THE SIN OF SCHISM 125

In the later history of the Church in Scotland it
may be noted that this same horror of schism and
division was manifested. The Seceders of 1733, when
compelled to separate themselves from the Church of
their fathers, persistently refused to admit that they
had broken away from the Church of Scotland, but
boldly and consistently made their appeal to the first
reformed assembly. The Covenanters and the early
Seceders successfully vindicated themselves against
any charge of schism, and showed themselves earnest
in their desire and endeavour to preserve and restore
the unity of the Church.!

The same, I fear, cannot be said of those who are
mainly responsible for the internal feuds and manifold
subdivisions within the Church of the Secession. In

1 [“ And likewise we do protest that, notwithstanding of our being
cast out from ministerial communion with the Established Church of
Scotland, we still hold communion with all and every one who desire
with us to adhere to the principles of the true presbyterian, covenanted
Church of Scotland. . .. And we hereby appeal unto the first free,
faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.”
Protest of the Four Seceders when declared by the Commission to be
“no longer ministers of This church,” November 16, 1733. “It is one
thing to depart from the communion of a church, and another thing to
depart from communion with a party in that church. . . . The ques-
tion is not concerning Secession from the Church of Scotland, but con-
cerning Secession from the present Judicatories of this National Church.
... It is one thing to depart from Communion with a particular
Church on account of her Corruptions, and another thing to unchurch
that same particular Church. . . . The seceding Ministers are neither
afraid nor ashamed to own that they have made a Secession from the
present Judicatories of this National Church ; but they refuse that they
have ever seceded from the Communion of the Church of Scotland, or
that they have made any Kind of Separation from her.” A Defence of the
Reformation Principles of the Church of Scotland, by William Wilson,
M.A., Minister of the Gospel at Perth, 1739. W. W. was one of the
Four Fathers of the Secession. ]

126 CHURCH UNITY

this respect it seems to me that Adam Gib was an
arch-offender. The admiration he has won from men
like Dr James Walker and Principal Fairbairn should
be enough to assure even those who are not acquainted
at first hand with his writings that Gib was a man of
no ordinary power. His success showed that in any
theological or ecclesiastical conflict he was a man to
be reckoned with. Yet I cannot help feeling that in
regard to the important matter of the unity of the
Church Gib contrasts badly not only with the Erskines,
but also with all the great ecclesiastics of Scotland
such as Rutherfurd, Brown, Durham, and even with
the Covenanters Cameron, Cargill and Renwick in the
times of their sorest straits. As contrasted with these
he seems to have had little appreciation of the doctrine
of church unity. He rent the church which he had
recognised as the true Reformed Church of Scotland,
and separated from the parent church only in respect
of its corruptions, I would not say lightly or wantonly,
for of his personal sincerity and intensity of conviction
there can be no doubt, but certainly in a spirit far
removed from that of Durham and others of his day.
At this distance of time, and amid the changed
conditions of the present age we are apt to regard
elaborate disquisitions like those of Rutherfurd,
Gillespie, and such like, as purely antiquarian speci-
mens of a misdirected ingenuity. We too often
lose patience with the men who carry a discussion
through hundreds of pages on what we now regard
as no better than the Pharisees’ tithing of mint and

THE SIN OF SCHISM 127

cummin, with a scrupulousness and a persistency
which we think might well have been reserved for
the weightier matters of truth and righteousness.
That heat of temper and violence of speech, as un-
necessary as they were undesirable, were only too
frequently exhibited is undeniable. But surely what
has been gathered together in this lecture should be
sufficient to show that all these men, even the most
extreme among them, had such a conception of the
importance of the unity of the Church, and such a
horror of the evil of schism, and were so firmly con-
vinced that any one who withdrew from church
communion without absolute cause, that is without
feeling assured that he could not remain in such
fellowship without committing sin, was guilty of a
most heinous offence, that they were ready to give
their most favourable consideration to any sort of
suggestion of reasons why they should refuse to go
out of a church, notwithstanding the existence in it
of many corruptions against which they must protest.
The very elaborateness of their investigations bears
witness to their anxiety to discover whether it might
not be possible without sin to maintain church con-
nection. If they differed among themselves they did
so only because they were convinced that these differ-
ences involved some vital truth. When a compliance
made or advocated by some was sternly and uncom-
promisingly resisted by others, it was because they
regarded it as a surrender of their spiritual liberty or
a betrayal of the cause of God.

128 CHURCH UNITY

John Welch of Irongray was the most conspicuous
of all the field preachers, who defied the tyrannical
laws of the land, a fanatic of fanatics his enemies
called him ; but, though he took his life in his hand
every day rather than make the least compliance, he
wrote this in the very midst of his fifty-two ‘ Direec-
tions” to his parishioners (1662) :—“ If you shall see
at this time a difference in opinions and practice
among us who were ministers of the gospel, some
standing and sticking at things that others can digest,
be not offended at this. It has been so always since
the beginning, it is no new thing. If there be some
that leave off preaching when others do continue to
preach though against law, I say, offend not at either
when both keep right in the main thing.” It was
only when they thought that “‘the main thing” was
in danger that they said even union that we prize so
highly we dare not have at such a price.

LECTURE IV
CHURCH PURITY—CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION

From all that has been said in our last lecture in
regard to the warmth and eagerness with which the
theologians of Scotland maintained the doctrine of
church unity, and held in horror and detestation any
movement or tendency that wrought in the direction
of separation, it must not be concluded that they
were in the very least inclined to entertain lax
views concerning the doctrine, worship, discipline, and
government of the Church, or to make light of the
entertaining of such views on the part of others.
No one who has the slightest acquaintance with
the history of the Scottish Church and with the
writings of its divines can for a moment suppose
that there would be with them any sacrifice of
the interests of church purity to those of church
unity.

But unfortunately the popular estimate of the
character and teaching of these men minimises their
endeavours after unity, and exaggerates the story of
their zeal on behalf of purity. In recent accounts
of the religious and social Life in Scotland in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the chapters

on Church Discipline are out of all proportion to the
I 129

130 CHURCH PURITY

others in point of size, of piquancy, and of fulness
of detail. Kirk-Sessions are commonly jested about
as courts of scandal, and their members described
as inquisitors, who were never happy unless they were
unravelling the secret twistings of some unsavoury
story, or running down some unfortunate misde-
meanant who was vainly seeking to elude their
detection. Even with historians and critics who are
by no means inclined to deal in a frivolous way with
moral and social questions there is a widespread
notion that the reign of the Kirk-Session in the Pres-
byterian Scotland of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was one of terror, and its tribunal a spiritual
despotism which exercised lordship over the con-
sciences, and counsels, and conduct of men.!

The truth underlying all the gross exaggerations
of such statements is just this, that the discipline of
the Church was something thoroughly, even terribly
real. Although, as we have seen, our church fathers
rejected most decidedly every purest theory of church
membership, they were by no means indifferent, their
very enemies being witnesses, to the duty of requiring
and maintaining a high moral standard, nor remiss in
their endeavours to realise it. Whether they always
took the wisest course in their efforts to secure the
end contemplated is another question. What we
call attention to here is the fact that this Church of

1 [Buckle’s History of Cwilisation in England, New Impression,
1902, vol. iii, chap. iv. pp. 206-210. Domestic Annals of Scotland,
by Robert Chambers, vols. i. and ii.]

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION L3t

true doctrine, which is often represented as interested
only in the details of doctrinal belief, and as saying
in effect to its members, Live as you like if only you
accept our doctrinal shibboleth, was just as much
concerned with men’s conduct as with their creed,
and did, in a manner most pointed and particular,
take to do with the ethical as well as the religious
life of the people.

Church purity in its widest sense was the aim
of Scottish presbyterianism in all its ecclesiastical
organisation. If the ecclesiastics resisted every pro-
posal of the Sectaries to narrow the bounds of the
visible Church of Christ by restricting church member-
ship to those who were in the judgment of charity
truly converted, or by unchurching all who did not
in everything see eye to eye with them, it was in
order that by the preaching of the word the healing
influence of the gospel might be brought to bear upon
the largest number possible of sinful men. Within
the visible church on earth, which is the world-wide
field of the sower, a discipline was exercised which
they claimed to be worthy of recognition in all the
particular churches. The exercise of this discipline
was a privilege which all the members of the
visible church could rightfully claim, a duty which
the Church owes to all its members, an obligation
which the Church may not without sin fail to
discharge.

It may be well to inquire a little as to the nature
of that discipline which was exercised in the early

132 CHURCH PURITY

Reformed Church of Scotland. We may compare
and contrast it with the penitential exercises of the
Roman Catholic Church which prevailed in Scotland
previous to the Reformation, and has continued in
all Roman Catholic countries, and, in a more or less
modified form, in Papal communities in Protestant
lands. It is, as we have already remarked, no un-
common thing to find the presbyterian discipline
characterised as a spiritual tyranny, comparable to
that of the papal Inquisition, and its exercise de-
nounced as an intrusion into the secrets of the
individual life as unwarrantable and as intolerable
as that of the priestly Confessional. From some
popular accounts given, with all the confidence of
authority, of the supervision of its members taken
_ by the Church of Scotland in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, you might picture to yourselves
the members of the Kirk-Session prowling about
from place to place on the outlook for something
which they might make matter of report when they
next met in solemn conclave; you might conceive
of them as eagerly emulating one another as to the
number of cases which they could ferret out, and
the skill with which they could perform a detective’s
part in worming themselves into the confidence of
those who were in possession of secrets damaging
to the reputation of the parties in regard to whom
suspicion was entertained, and in diligently and
carefully recording circumstances of speech or conduct
on the part of the accused that might plausibly be

. CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION i338

construed into evidence of guilt.1_ The elder was not
only one of the bench of judges before whom the
case was to be tried, he was also public prosecutor,
who was understood to take a sort of professional
pleasure in providing cases for the court in which
he sat, and in making good the charges against the
culprit at the bar.

Now it would be rash to declare that throughout
the length and breadth of Scotland and throughout
the centuries of the history of the Reformed Scottish
Church there have never been individual elders who
did not at some time or other act in the hateful and
contemptible manner described ; but, hard as the task
of proving a negative notoriously is, I venture fear-
lessly to affirm that never in north or south, in earlier
or in later times, has there been a Kirk-Session which
acted in such a way, and did not rather enter on cases
of scandal with reluctance and bitter regret as on the

1 [The meetings of Kirk-Session took up a preposterous amount of
his [the Minister’s] time. Every rumour of misdemeanour, every sus-
picion of Scandal was reported to and by the watchful self-important
elders. . . . The lynx eyes of elders and deacons, to whom were assigned
the spiritual superintendence of different parts of the parish, both to
watch and to pray, were alert in every corner. Every rumour, every
suspicion of ill-doing was reported to the Kirk-Session, and evidence of
the most inquisitive kind was taken. . . . During services elders went
out to “perlustrate” the streets, to enter change-houses, to look into
windows and doors of private dwellings, and to bring deserters to kirk,
or report them to the Kirk-Session. . . . Every night at nine o’clock
or ten o’clock, elders went through the streets to see if any one loitered
on the way ; they entered the taverns and dismissed the occupants
home, a practice which originated a well-known phrase, “elders’
hours.” ... There was not a place where one was free from their

inquisitorial intrusion.—The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth
Century, by Henry Grey Graham, 1899, vol. ii. chap. viii. passim.]

134 CHURCH PURITY

discharge of a painful duty which it was obliged to
perform, as much in the interests of the individual
concerned as of the church to which he belonged.
We unfortunately know very little of the individual
members of the Kirk-Session whose proceedings,
ordinarily in a very bald and summary form, have
come down to us; but from the few specimens of
the presbyterian elders, whose names survive, and of
whose general religious character and conduct we
have more or less detailed accounts, we can well
understand that the majority and the most influential
portion of these office-bearers were men who loved
righteousness after the pattern of Christ Himself, men
who aimed at hastening the coming of the Kingdom
of God and at bringing and keeping others as well as
themselves within that kingdom which is righteous-
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.1 The
compilers of the Books of Discipline regarded public
procedure as warrantable only in the case of public
scandal, and only after every endeavour had been
made to prevent any fault developing to such an
extent as to demand public rebuke.? Jf, however,

1[In this connection attention may be directed to a work of historical
interest and value : Glimpses of Pastoral Work in the Covenanting Times,
by the Rev. William Ross, LL.D., 1877, and especially to chaps. viii.
and ix. ‘“ Work of the Kirk-Session : its Domain and pervading Spirit.
Work of the Kirk-Session, in Ordinary Cases of Discipline.”]

2 [“ First, if the offence be secret and known to few, and rather stands
in suspicion than in manifest probation, the offender ought to be
privately admonished to abstain from all appearance of evil; which if
he promise to do, and to declare himself sober, honest, and one that

feareth God, and feareth to offend his brethren, then may the secret
admonition suffice for his correction.” The First Book of Duscipline.

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION Les

the Church’s confession, either in creed or in conduct,
had been openly violated, then the public injury
done must be atoned for by humiliation and repent-
ance before all. James VI. caused a public scandal
by persistently neglecting to bring George, Earl of
Huntly, to trial for the murder of ‘‘ the bonnie Earl
of Moray.” Patrick Simpson, minister of Stirling,
preaching before the King, chose for his text the words,
“Where is Abel, thy brother?” and pointedly ad-
dressed his Majesty, saying, “Sir, I assure you the
Lord will ask at you, Where is the Earl of Moray,
your brother.” ‘Mr Patrick,’ answered the King
before the whole congregation, “‘my chalmer door
was never steeked upon you; ye might have told me
anything you thought in secret.” “Sir,” replied
Simpson, “the scandal is public.”! In such a case
as this it is surely quite evident that private dealing
would by no means satisfy the requirements of Church
discipline. There was no time at which it was a
mere private scandal. By refusing to bring the
guilty to justice the King had made himself before
the whole people a party in the crime, and, therefore,
in presence of the subjects before whom his offence
was committed the rebuke must be administered.

The distinction between matters which should be
the occasion of private admonition, and those which
should be the occasion of public censure, is very

The Seventh Head, of Ecclesiastical Discipline. Laing’s Knox, vol. ii.
p. 228. Dunlop’s Collection, vol. ii. pp. 569, 570.]

1Row’s History of the Kirk of Scotland, 1592, p. 144. Wodrow Society
Ed. M‘Crie’s Story of the Scottish Church, Part I. chap. v. pp. 83, 84.

136 CHURCH PURITY

carefully stated by Durham in his Treatise concerning
Scandal. In the first part, “ concerning Scandal in
the general,” he discusses the question as to what
offence, in the ecclesiastical acceptation of the word,
exactly is. Offence or stumbling, as he employs the
word, “is something that doth or may mar the
spiritual edification of another, whether he be pleased
or displeased ; anything that may be the occasion of
a fall to another, and make him stumble, or weak, or
to halt in the course of holiness, as some block would -
hinder or put a man in hazard to fall in the running
of a race.” 1 Such a scandal or offence may be either
private or public, and that in respect either of the
witnesses of it, or in respect of its own nature. A
private scandal is one which offends few, because of
its not being known to many, whereas a public one is
a scandal known to many. Then an offence may be
private in respect of its own nature if it is not of such
a nature that it can be publicly, legally or judicially
made out to be scandalous, as when, “ the general tract
of one’s way and carriage” display “vanity, pride,
earthly mindedness, untenderness, want of love and
respect.” On the other hand, offences may be public
in respect of their own nature when there is such a
way of bearing them out before others as proves them
to be contrary to the rule, as in the case of drunken-
ness, swearing, and such-like offences.? Rutherfurd,

1 [Part I. chap. i. Several Distinctions of Scandal. After giving
sixteen distinctions the author adds a few more. ]

2 [“These [public scandals in their own nature] may be called
ecclesiastical or judicial offences, as being the object of Church censure ;

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION £37

in his Due Right of Presbyteries, contends elaborately,
in opposition to the Sectaries or Independents, that
the keys of discipline were committed not to the
Church, but to the officers of the Church. Robinson
and his party argued that two or three making Peter’s
confession are a church, that these making such a
confession may be without officers, and that, therefore,
to these two or three without officers, the promises made
to Peter must be fulfilled. To this Rutherfurd answers
that these two or three professors without officers may
be a church mystical, but that it is not to the church
mystical but to the church ministerial that Christ
gave the power of the keys, which includes pastoral
authority to preach and baptise. The keys are given
for the mystical church, but not to it.

But, as we have said, it is the duty of members of
the Christian Church and of the officers to do what in
them lies, in cases where this is possible, to prevent
private offences developing into public scandals. And
so we find in the writings of our Scottish theologians
all the other may be called conscience or charity-wounding offences,
because they are the object of a person’s conscience and charity, and do
wound them, and are judged by them, and may be the ground of a
Christian private admonition, but not of public reproof, or rather
may be called unconscientious and uncharitable offences, as being
opposite to conscience and charity,” Part I. chap. i.]

1 The Due Right of Presbytertes or a Peaceable Plea for the Government
of the Church of Scotland, 1644, pp. 176-185. [‘‘ Men may be a Church of
Christians, and a mystical Church before they have a ministry, but
they are not a governing Church, having the power of the keys, so long
as they want officers, who only have warrant ordinary of Christ to use
the keys. . . . We never find in the word of God any practice or precept

that a single company did use the keys or can use them, wanting all
officers,” chap. viii. sect. 7, pp. 177, 179.]

138 CHURCH PURITY

much space given to discussions on our Lord’s teaching
in the gospel of St Matthew: “And if thy brother
sin against thee, go, shew him his fault between
thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained
thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with
thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two
witnesses or three every word may be established.
And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the
Church [Marg. or, Congregation]; and if he refuse to
hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the
Gentile and the publican.”! It was noted that here
there are two preliminary steps prescribed. First, a
purely private dealing, in which the Christian brother,
who has been cognisant of another’s fault, and who
feels it laid upon his conscience to attempt to gain his
- brother, goes to the offender and endeavours to bring
him to repentance ; and, second, in case this private
dealing fails, a semi-public admonition, in which the
offended brother joins with himself one or two more,
so that the agreement of these Christian men in con-
demning the offence may be more convincing with
him who has committed the wrong.

These two steps may represent far more than two
meetings with the brother offending. Indeed the
first mode of procedure is to be persevered in and
repeated so long as there is any hope of the offender
becoming penitent and forsaking his evil ways. The
procedure in Church circles should be distinguished
from that in civil courts, as concerned not merely

1 St Matthew xviii. 15-17 [R.V.].

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 139

with the good of the common body, but also with
the restoration and cure of the erring member. And
so it is noted that church censures have weight in
proportion as they are seen to proceed from love, and
that hasty bringing to public reproof is construed by
many to be a seeking of their shame; whereas when
it is rare, and done only when other efforts have been
exhausted, and when such publicity of rebuke is
reasonable, it affects the conscience instead of arousing
prejudice.t It is also pointed out in this connection
that public rebukes are rare in Scripture. Further, it
is made to appear that Scottish ecclesiastics have
always been most unwilling to go to extremes and
rashly to inflict public censures, and that they were
against the frequency of such rebukes inasmuch as
in such a case they lose their power. One such act of
discipline, solemnly and tenderly performed, would be
in their judgment, far more effective than many such
oftrepeated could possibly be. Scottish commentators
found no difficulty whatever in using the passage in
St Matthew’s Gospel to which we have referred in
support of their theory of Church censures. So far as
I can discover there is no hint in any of their writings,
doctrinal or exegetical, of any doubt as to the sound-
ness of the view that the Church which, in the last

1 [ “Tf the crime be public and such as is heinous then ought the
offender to be called in presence of the Minister, Elders and Deacons,
where his sin and trespass ought to be declared and dwelt upon, so that
his conscience may feel how far he hath offended God, and what slander
[scandal] he hath raised in the Kirk.” Furst Book of Discipline. The
Seventh Head.]

140 CHURCH PURITY

resort, is to be told of the guilty brother’s offence is
the regularly constituted Church with its officers and
courts. The reaction that has set in against an
extreme ecclesiasticism has led recent expositors,
Meyer, Alford and Bruce, to maintain very strongly
that the ecclesia of the passage, if it is to be held as
the word of our Lord, can only refer to the general
community of His followers.1 They give us the choice
of understanding the word either of the twelve (not
qua apostles but qua disciples) or of the larger circle
of the disciples. Dr Bruce in particular, in his notes
on the passage in question, denies that there can be
any reference to ecclesiastical discipline and Church
censures, charging the old expositors with treating it
in a theologico-polemical interest in support of their
developed ideas on these topics. He holds that the
statement must be divested of all ecclesiastical refer-
ence if it is to be taken as a genuine saying of
our Lord. On the other hand, Julius Miller and
Professor Bannerman have stoutly maintained that
the older exegesis, call it by what name you will, is
the correct and natural one.? Cases of discipline

1 [Certainly not the Jewish synagogue. Nothing could be further
from the spirit of our Lord’s command than proceedings in what were
oddly enough called “ecclesiastical” Courts. Alford.]

2 [According to Professor Bannerman there are five different senses in
which the word Church is used in the New Testament Scriptures.
After giving the fifth, in which it is applied “to the body of professing
believers in any place, as represented by their rulers or office-bearers,” Dr
Bannerman remarks: “An example of this application of the term
Church is to be found in Matthew xviii., when our Lord is laying down
the principles on which a Christian ought to proceed in the case of a
brother who has trespassed against him. . . . In such an injunction our

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 14]

among the Jews in the days of our Lord were ad-
ministered by regularly appointed officials or elders ;
and surely it is not putting an undue strain upon the
passage before us to assume that when Jesus, without
indicating any essential or radical change of constitu-
tion, speaks of procedure before the Church He gave it
to be understood that the new society, which was to
be inaugurated in His name and under His authority,
would conduct its cases on the same lines as did that
Church with which He and His hearers were familiar.

Strict the Scottish discipline of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries undoubtedly was, but inquisi-
torial it was not. This is shown very notably by
what Durham says in his chapter “ concerning what is
to be done when offending persons give no satis-
faction.”+ He strives to restrict the cases for public
prosecution as far as possible. It is only when the
parties seem themselves to court publicity and to
flaunt their faults openly, and in this way evidently
show contempt for the order and authority of the
Church, that offences not in themselves peculiarly
“horrid and scandalous,” are to be dealt with by
regular process before the court. Durham gives
examples of the offences which he considers to be
Lord referred to the synagogue court known and established among the
Jews, which had its elders and officers for the decision of such matters
of discipline ; and in the expression ‘the Church,’ which He made use
of, the Jews who heard Him must have understood the authorised
rulers, as distinct from the ruled, to be the parties who were to
determine in such controversies.” The Church of Christ, vol. i. chap.

Lp. 14]
1 [Concerning Scandal, Part II. chap. v.]

142 CHURCH PURITY

such as do not call for correction by public process
unless when accompanied by contempt of court.
They are such as, though scandalous, ‘‘come nearer
to sins of infirmity.” Among these he names
“officious lying, angry passionate words, the sparing-
ness of Charity in Church members in giving little to
the poor or less than proportionally they should,
though they do not altogether shut their bowels.”
The ground upon which Durham would not proceed
to excommunication in the case of such offences may
seem rather peculiar. It is “ because excommunica-
tion is a chastisement for some singular offences, and
is not for offences that are so common.’ Now the
frequency or infrequency of an offence cannot safely
be made the rule according to which the measure of
the discipline inflicted is to be determined. It is
quite conceivable that the circumstances of an age or
a community might be such that some very serious
offence has become common, or that some fault,
usually rare, has become abnormally frequent, and
for that very reason it demands severely repressive
treatment.

But the attitude taken up by Durham shows how
anxious he was to avoid the infliction of extreme
penalties. Not the authority and dignity of the
Church, but the moral and spiritual well-being of the
members of the Church lay near to his heart.

To the charge against the Scottish Church discipline
of encouraging a prying scrutinising of the secrets of
private and family life, and of developing in those

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 143

who carried it out a relish for scandalous details, I
know no better answer than the reading of this chapter
of Durham’s treatise in which he shows how he would
proceed in cases where first attempts at the correction
of offenders by private admonition seemed to fail.
Even in cases of contempt Durham pleads for much
forbearance and patience, in the hope that such
evident unwillingness to proceed to extremities,
accompanied by serious and loving dealing, may
soften the obstinate offender, and in order, in case
of confirmed obduracy, to make it manifest to all that
the offence had become altogether insufferable.

It is important to mark carefully the limits of the
satisfaction demanded by the presbyterian Church
of Scotland. In thorough consistency with his view
as to the terms of membership in the visible Church,
Durham holds that the Church may not demand for
her satisfaction evidence of the saving grace of re-
pentance or godly sincerity therein. ‘The discipline
of the visible Church has to do with what is visible.
A confession and a carriage which in the judgment of
charity are morally serious, not openly simulated or
hypocritical, must be accepted without the instituting

1[“ What, when an offence is not gross, yet hath contempt with it ?
Much forbearance, and even a kind of overlooking (so far as is consist-
ent with faithfulness), is to be exercised in such cases, in reference to
some persons, for it hath prejudice with it to take notice of such
scandals, and thereafter without satisfaction to pass from them, and it
is difficult and not always edifying to pursue them: we conceive it
therefore more fit not to take judicial notice (at least) of them all; but
to continue a serious and loving dealing with such persons in private,
because possibly more rigid dealing might wrong them and the Church
more than edifie.” Part II. chap. v.]

144 CHURCH PURITY

of any further inquiry. Such a sober, serious acknow-
ledgment! of the offence ought to secure access for the
party immediately to the enjoyment of all privileges.
There may indeed be degrees of satisfaction, but this
applies only to the process, not to the judgment.
There may be enough satisfaction to warrant sisting
procedure, though not enough to warrant full resti-
tution. But in the end there must be absolution or
continued suspension, usually called the lesser ex-
communication. Not proven is no verdict, but only
a declaration of the existence of reasons for continuing
the case.

An important distinction was drawn by the old
theologians between the key of doctrine and the key
of discipline. As treated by Durham, the key of

1 [“ By Divines this is called moral seriousness or sincerity, as it is
distinguished from that which is gracious.” Part II. chap. viii.]

2 [ What is called the power of the keys is a subject of much import-
ance in the Popish controversy. The name and the doctrine are derived
from the words addressed by our Lord to Peter: ‘I will give thee
the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ Sometimes the power of the
keys is employed by theological writers to describe the right to
execute, and the actual execution of the whole of the functions per-
manently executed by ecclesiastical office-bearers ; and it is to this wide
sense of the expression that the division of the subject into the two heads
of the key of doctrine and the key of discipline is usually applied—the
former comprehending the preaching of the word and the administration
of sacraments, and the latter including not merely the infliction and
removal of censures—a limited sense in which the word discipline is
sometimes employed—but the whole practical administration of the
ordinary necessary business of the Church as a visible organised society.
It is, however, more common perhaps to distinguish the power of the
keys from the preaching of the word and the administration of the
sacraments ; and when this distinction is made, then the power of the
keys just describes what, according to the former division, is compre-
hended under the key of discipline.” Cunningham, Dzscussions on

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 145

doctrine or the word reaches to and judges the
thoughts and intents of the heart; the key of dis-
cipline reaches “only to restrain, regulate, and judge
the outward man.” What the key of doctrine does
immediately the key of discipline does at best
mediately by condemning a man’s outward practice.
The key of the word debarreth from saving promises
and the things contained in them ; the key of discipline
only shuts from outward privileges and does not shut
from any spiritual interest in Christ. The key of
doctrine opens to none but upon condition of sincere
faith and repentance ; discipline only absolves from
outward censure and gives right to Church privileges.
And finally, in using the key of doctrine a minister
shuts out an offender “from heaven and saving
privileges” only conditionally, not absolutely, and
he cannot absolve absolutely by the key of doctrine,
only conditionally ; but in the exercise of the key of
discipline no Church judicatory debars conditionally
but absolutely, and “when they receive any into
Church-communion they do not absolve them upon
condition they believe, but absolutely that censure
is removed, and they are admitted into these
privileges.” }

In view of these clearly marked distinctions Durham
concludes that it is warrantable and necessary to dis-
tinguish between saving grace, which is the condition

Church Principles, chap. ix. Church Power, pp. 235, 247. See also
Prof. Bannerman’s Church of Christ, Vol. II. Part III. Div. iii. ch. i.
pp. 194, 195.]
1 [Concerning Scandal, Part II. chap. viii.]
K

146 CHURCH PURITY

of absolution in the exercise of the key of doctrine,
and serious profession, a fair inoffensive carriage,
which is the condition of absolution in the exercise
of the key of discipline.

It may seem to some that these old theologians
reiterate this statement needlessly. It is insisted
upon, for example, by Durham, on page after page,
sometimes repeatedly upon one page. It is illustrated
by examples real and hypothetical ; it is supported by
arguments from Scripture, from doctrine, from life ;
it is shown that any other view of the matter lands
in confusion and absurdity. These divines, though
often charged with the fault, were much too clear-
sighted controversialists to indulge in vain repetitions.
In particular, they so kept the main end of their dis-
cussion before them that they would never have thrust
forward into prominence a mere subsidiary point or
a mere side issue. The reiteration of a statement like
this can only be accounted for on the ground that
very disastrous results would follow from a failure to
observe the distinction, and that it would be a very
dangerous and hurtful thing were the Church in the
exercise of the key of discipline to make saving grace
rather than a serious profession the condition upon
which censure or absolution is pronounced.

It has always to be borne in mind that these old
Scottish Presbyterians — Rutherfurd, Durham, and
their brethren—had to deal with those who made the
Church to consist exclusively of those who professed
to be regenerate and who had been received into the

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 147

Church as such. To these Scots, with their strong
common-sense and their precise logical habit of
thought, it seemed an absurdity to make an invisible
grace the condition or term of membership in a visible
Church. But just because they would not go beyond
requiring something visible as the condition of recep-
tion into a visible community, they sought to make
it as sure as possible that this visible something is
a reality. Only a serious profession was with them
a visible one. It was seen in life and conduct from
day to day. It might not in reality correspond to
the inward and invisible quality which it professed ;
yet it was serious in the sense that no manifest in-
congruity between what was professed or the inward,
and what was apparent or the outward could be
detected. In short, what is to be demanded of a
person under Church censure in order that he may
obtain absolution is such a sincere and serious pro-
fession of repentance as will warrant the Church in
declaring the scandal removed.

As regards the purpose of ecclesiastical censures as
administered in the early Reformed Church of Scot-
land, the best commentary on the relative chapter in
the First Book of Discypline is found in what is
commonly called Knox’s Liturgy.! As to the parties
amenable to Church censure it was laid down that all
baptised persons were under the jurisdiction of the

1 [The work usually passes under the name of Knox’s Psalms and
Liturgy. In early times it was generally known as The Book of Common
Order. Laing’s Knox, vol. vi. p. 277.]

148 CHURCH PURITY

Church and subject to her disciplme. And so the
form in which the sentence of excommunication was
uttered, “in public audience of the people,” began
thus: “It is clearly known unto us that N., sometime
baptised in the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost, and so reputed and counted
for a Christian, hath fearfully fallen from the society
of Christ’s body.” ! And in the introductory address,
giving instruction as to the exercise of discipline,
speaking of the crimes that deserve excommunication,
our Church Reformers say: “It is to be noted that
all crimes that by the law of God deserve death
deserve also excommunication from the society of
Christ’s Church, whether the offender be Papist or
Protestant. For it is no reason that, under pretence
- of diversity of religion, open impiety should be
suffered in the visible body of Christ Jesus.” Papist
and Protestant alike belong to the visible Church.
Protestant and Presbyterian John Knox claimed the
right of dealing with any Papist guilty of crime and
under condemnation of the law, as also of pronouncing
upon him the severest censures of the Church.
According to him and all the Scottish Reformers,
excommunication, like all other Church ordinances,
was not the action of a sect, but the action of the
Catholic Church. On the same ground excommunica-
tion by the Church of Rome for an excommunicable

1 [The Order of Excommunication and of Public Repentance used in
the Church of Scotland, and commanded to be printed by the General
Assembly of the same, 1569. Laing’s Knox, vol. vi. p. 451.]

2 [ Ibid. p. 449.]

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 149

offence was held by these divines to be as strictly
valid as excommunication pronounced by consistory
or presbytery, in Geneva or in Edinburgh.

It was upon this principle, and not, as some seem
to think, in a cold, reckless, meaningless manner, that
Donald Cargill, at Torwood, in October 1680, pro-
nounced his sentence against the King, the Dukes of
York, Monmouth, Lauderdale and Rothes, General
Dalziel and Sir George Mackenzie. Papists and Protes-
tants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, they were all
equally amenable to Church censure, if guilty of crimes
warranting such discipline. The only questionable
thing in regard to Cargill’s action is as to his posses-
sion of Church authority for pronouncing sentence.
It was distinctly ordained in The Book of Common
Order that nothing should be attempted in the way
of excommunication without the determination of
the whole Church.? Cargill’s apology for himself
when he acted as if he were the whole Church was
the distressful circumstances of the times. But
that it was competent for the Church of Scotland
to give forth sentence against these men no

1 [The Torwood Excommunication begins thus: “I being a minister
of Jesus Christ, and having authority and power from Him, do in His
name, and by His Spirit, excommunicate Charles the Second, King,
etc., and that upon the account of these wickednesses.”]

2 [It is ordained that nothing be attempted in that behalf [Excom-
munication] without the determination of the whole Church. The
Form of Prayers, ete. Laing’s Knox, vol. iv. p. 205.]

3 [“And as the causes are just, so being done by a minister of the
gospel, and in such a way as the present persecution would admit of, the
sentence is just.” Sentence in closing paragraph of Cargill’s Excom-
munication. |

150 CHURCH PURITY

minister or theologian in that Church for a moment
doubted.

There was always great reluctance on the part of
our Church fathers to proceed to the last extreme of
discipline in pronouncing the sentence of excommuni-
cation. So far from taking a malicious pleasure and
finding a cruel satisfaction in the infliction of this
dread censure upon the obstinate and contemptuous
offender, they showed themselves anxious to discover
any good cause why they should not proceed, and in
all cases delayed execution until every possible means
had been used to win the offender to repentance, and
to make it possible to retain him in, or restore him to,
the visible Church, the body of Jesus Christ.

In the introductory section of Zhe Order of the
Ecclesiastical Discipline in the Form of Prayers and
Ministration of the Sacraments, etc., used in the Eng-
lish Congregation at Geneva, 1556, it is ordained
“that all punishments, corrections, censures, and
admonitions, stretch no farther than God’s Word,
with mercy, may lawfully bear.”! It is of the utmost
importance in our estimating the spirit and character
of our Scottish divines to emphasise, as they certainly
intended to emphasise, the phrase so significantly
inserted in this instruction to Church officers—“ with
mercy.” They were not only not to strain God’s
Word so as to inflict a sentence which only by a very
rigid and therefore somewhat disputable interpretation
of Scripture might be warranted, but they were to in-

1 [Laing’s Knox, vol, iv. p. 206.]

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 151

terpret and apply the word lovingly, mercifully, in the
spirit of Christ, who came not to destroy men’s lives but
to save. And the insertion of this phrase was no mere
matter of form. It was really meant to indicate the
spirit in which the whole proceedings were to be carried
out. This is shown very evidently in the admonition
to office-bearers to ‘‘ beware and take good heed that
they seem not more ready to expel from the Congre-
gation than to receive again those in whom they per-
ceive worthy fruits of repentance to appear.”! Even
in beginning a process of private discipline, office-
bearers are to assure themselves that the fault is
‘‘reprovable by God’s Word.” 2 No doubt this gives
a large discretion to ministers and kirk-sessions as to
the range of offences with which it is required of them
that they should deal. The word of God does not
supply us with a list of indictable offences, but only
with certain principles whereby we may discover for
ourselves what in God’s sight is right and what is
wrong. But it is just at this point that the quali-
fying clause “with mercy” has most useful appli-
cation.

A fair and dispassionate reading of the instructions
about discipline, and especially of the order of pro-
cedure in the administration of it will show how real
and effective this merciful spirit was in the Scottish
form of ecclesiastical discipline as originally devised.
The motive urging to action is to be carefully con-
sidered in order to ascertain if the “admonitions

1 [Laing’s Knox, pp. 205, 206.] 2 [Ibid. pp. 204, 205.]

152 CHURCH PURITY

proceed of a goodly zeal and conscience, rather
seeking to win our brother than to slander him.” ?
That the main object in view in the infliction of
such censures was the spiritual benefit of the offender,
and that discipline was regarded chiefly as a means of
grace can be gathered from this that even if the
accused refused to express sorrow and repentance at
his appearance on two successive Sabbaths his defection
and contempt were to be made public only on the
third Sabbath.2 Here also all was to be done “ with
mercy.” For on these two Sabbaths when the crime
and the admonitions were stated in public, and the
person was admonished to make satisfaction which he
had refused in private, it was to be done “ without
specification of his name.”® And when the pre-
liminary procedure had a good effect, so that the
offender, between the first and second Sabbaths,
expressed his penitence, his name was not made
public, and he was not required to make a public
appearance. It was sufficient that on the following
Sabbath the minister, “at commandment of the
session,” make declaration of his repentance and
submission in these or other closing words: ‘ But
seeing that it hath pleased God to mollify the heart of
our brother, whose name we need not to express, so

1 [Laing’s Knox, p. 204.]

2 [If he continues stubborn, then the third Sunday [not Sabbath]
ought he to be charged publicly to satisfy the Church for his offence
and contempt, under the pain of excommunication.” The Order of Ez-
communication. Laing’s Knox, vol. vi. p. 454.]

3 [Ibid. p. 454.]

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION oe:

that he hath not only acknowledged his offence, but
also hath fully satisfied the brethren that first were
offended, and us the Ministry, and hath promised to
abstain from all appearance of such evil as whereof he
was suspected and admonished, we have no just cause
to proceed to any further extremity, but rather to
glorify God for the submission of our brother, and
unfeignedly pray unto Him that in the like case we
and every one of us may give the like obedience.” ?

I do not find that a careful reading of the con-
stitutional history of the Scottish Church, nor an
examination of cases and the procedure in them, so
far as these are reported, warrants one to say that
there was any real lack of tenderness in the law or in
the administration of it.?

As Dr Edgar, in his extremely interesting and
instructive lectures, points out, tenderness is a relative

1 [Ibid., pp. 454, 455.]

2 [In the First Book of Discipline it is provided that when a peni-
tent offender wishes to make public repentance, “ earnestly desiring the
Congregation to pray to God with him for mercy, and to accept him in
their society, notwithstanding his former offences, then the Church may
and ought receive him as a penitent ; for the Church ought to be no
more severe than God declareth Himself to be, who witnesseth, that, in
whatsoever hour a sinner unfeignedly repenteth and turns from his
wicked way, that He will not remember one of his iniquities. And
therefore the Church ought diligently to advert that it excommunicate
not those whom God absolveth.” Then, in the case of a person who
has been excommunicated being publicly restored, this striking injune-
tion is given :—“ The Minister ought to exhort the Church to receive
that penitent brother into their favour, as they require God to receive
themselves when they have offended ; and in sign of their consent, the
Elders and chief men of the Church shall take the penitent by the ~
hand, and one or two in name of the whole shall kiss and embrace him,
with all reverence and gravity, as a member of Christ Jesus.” Laing’s
Knox, vol. ii. pp. 228, 229, 232.]

154 CHURCH PURITY

term, so that what was regarded as tender in a com-
paratively rude age would be differently designated in
one of higher culture and refinement. “The discip-
line administered in the Church of Scotland in ancient
times,” Dr Edgar remarks,! “was not what most
people would consider either tender or moderate. It
is proper to remark, however, that people’s notions of
tenderness are constantly changing, and that in every
age there have been men who have maintained that
the discipline of the Church in their own day was
tender enough. Whatever the Church may be or may
do, whether she is tender or rigid, whether she
punishes or passes over transgressions, she will always
have enemies and detractors to speak evil of her
procedure. When her discipline was strict, she was
called intolerant and tyrannical; now that her
discipline is milder, she is said to have lost her power
and influence, and is blamed for leaving the masses to
perish in brutality and atheism. There is no form of
action on the part of the Church that will stop the
mouths of gainsayers. All that the Church in her
discipline can do is to seek men’s good in the way
that experience shows to be the most practicable.”
One of the main charges brought against the dis-
cipline of our Church fathers is that of intolerance.
It is said that no room was given for the exercise of —
individual liberty, that they insisted that every one

should think precisely as they thought, and express

1 [Old Church Life in Scotland : Lectures on Kirk-Session and Presbytery
Records. By Andrew Edgar, D.D., Minister at Mauchline, 1885,
Lec. iv. pp. 197, 199.]

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 155

their thoughts in exactly the same terms as they
employed. This description of their attitude towards
those who differed from them cannot be accepted
without several large and important reservations.
It would be easy to show that not only were there
considerable differences in the views of the several
members of the school in regard to doctrinal as well
as practical matters, but that also they recognised
the right of others, their predecessors and contem-
poraries, to advocate views differing from their own
without feeling called upon to condemn them as
heretical or antichristian. They did indeed make
an honest distinction between fundamentals and non-
fundamentals, although it must be confessed that
they enlarged the list of the former in a way that
can scarcely be regarded as defensible. It is only
fair to state that there were things upon which they
were willing to agree to differ. But no modern divine,
historian or critic would maintain that the list of
such things was not much too brief.

In his work, A Free Disputation against Pre-
tended Inberty of Conscience, Rutherfurd begins
with a discussion of conscience. It is, he says,
“knowledge with a witness. It is not a distinct
faculty from the understanding, but the understand-
ing as it giveth judgment, in court of the man’s state
and of all his ways, as whether he be in favour with
God or no, and whether he be in Christ or not, and
of all his motions and actions within and without.”
Further, “ Conscience is not the simple judgment and

156 CHURCH PURITY

apprehension of things, as things are honourable, but
it is the power to know things ourselves, and actions,
in order to obey God and serve him.” Rutherfurd
condemns scrupulosity as a “fault and disease of the
conscience, as when it doubts and fears for trifles,
where there is no grave and weighty cause.” +

In the second chapter of the treatise there is a great
deal that is admirably put in opposition to liber-
tines and Anabaptists, whose objections to synods and
ecclesiastical decisions of any kind took the form of
individualism run mad. Rutherfurd here lays down
certain principles whereby he would distinguish
liberty from licence, the finding of conscience from
the caprice of individual opinion. The author of
Tex Rex; the Law and the Prince is the vindicator
of law against the lawlessness of short-sighted en-
thusiasts. So far we can heartily go along with him.
It is when we come to his application of those prin-
ciples that we are constrained at times to part com-
pany with him.

As often as we do so it may be well for us to bear
in mind the words of a nineteenth-century historian
with which we may fitly bring this lecture to a close:
“‘ And now suppose the Kirk had been the broad,
liberal, philosophical, intellectual thing which some
people think it ought to have been, how would it
have fared in that crusade; how altogether would
it have encountered those surplices of Archbishop

1 [A Free Disputation, &c., chap. i. of Conscience and its Nature, pp.
2, 3, 21.)

CENSURES AND EXCOMMUNICATION 157

Laud or those dragoons of Claverhouse? It is hard
to lose one’s life for a ‘perhaps,’ and philosophical
belief at the bottom means a ‘ perhaps,’ and nothing
more. For more than half the seventeenth century,
the battle had to be fought out in Scotland, which
in reality was the battle between liberty and des-
potism ; and where except in an intense, burning
conviction that they were maintaining God’s cause
against the devil, could the poor Scotch people have
found the strength for the unequal struggle which
was forced upon them? Toleration is a good thing
in its place; but you cannot tolerate what will not
tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat. En-
lightenment you cannot have enough of, but it must
be the true enlightenment which sees a thing in all
its bearings. In these matters the vital questions
are not always those which appear on the surface ;
and in the passion and resolution of brave and noble
men there is often an inarticulate intelligence deeper
than what can be expressed by words. Action some-
times will hit the mark, when the spoken word either
misses it or is but half the truth. On such subjects,
and with common men, latitude of mind means weak-
ness of mind. There is but a certain quantity of
spiritual force in any man. Spread it over a broad
surface, the stream is shallow and languid; narrow
the channel, and it becomes a driving force. Hach
may be well at its own time. The mill-race which
drives the water-wheel is dispersed in rivulets over
the meadow at its foot. The Covenanters fought the

158 CHURCH PURITY

fight and won the victory, and then, and not till then,
came the David Humes with their essays on miracles,
and the Adam Smiths with their political economies,
and steam-engines, and railroads, and philosophical
institutions, and all the other blessed or unblessed
fruits of liberty.” 4

1James Anthony Froude, Short Studies, 1895. The Influence of the
Reformation on the Scottish Character.

LECTURE V
CHURCH POWER—THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED

THE separate jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities was a distinction firmly grasped and clearly
expressed by the ministers and members of the Re-
formed Church of Scotland from the earliest times.
During the pre-reformation period in Scotland this
distinction was for the most part lost sight of. It
was Rome’s policy in every Catholic country to assume
to herself the civil as well as the ecclesiastical power.
Before the Reformation in Scotland, as in England, all
the chief offices of State were held by Churchmen. In
the northern kingdom during minorities bishops were
regents and chief administrators, under the kings they
dominated the councils, held the chancellorships, and
sat as judges in the Court of Session, while they or
other ecclesiastical persons presided in almost all the
provincial courts of justice. No man could hope to
Win in any suit, however just his claim might be, if
in any way the interests of Church or Churchmen
would thereby be injuriously affected. Many of
these ecclesiastical dignitaries were noble’and honour-
able men; many of them were very certainly quite
the reverse. But whether good or bad, it was the
Church which through them considered and deter-

159

160 CHURCH POWER

mined all civil causes. When, therefore, the Reforma-
tion was accomplished in this country there was no
considerable body of the nobility qualified by training
and experience to occupy the highest positions in the
State, and the ministers of the Reformed Church, many
of whom as Churchmen had previously served in
offices of State, were consulted and looked to for
advice by the lords of the congregation, on whom the
government of the country and the guidance of affairs
had devolved. This largely accounts for the frequent
appearing of our Scottish reformers as political ad-
visers in times of difficulty ; and it also explains why
on several occasions requests were made of the
Assembly to allow certain of their number to act as

judges in the Court of Session. Such employment of
- ministers, however, was regarded in the Reformed
Church of Scotland as undesirable and ordinarily
improper, and was permitted only in cases that were
distinctly exceptional. From the very first our
reformers recognised the separateness of the two
jurisdictions, and deprecated any action that might
tend to obliterate or confuse this distinction. In the
Second Book of Discipline, agreed upon in the General
Assembly of 1578, only six years after the death of
Knox, it is expressly declared that the criminal or
civil jurisdiction in the person of a pastor is a cor-
ruption. ‘‘ We deny not,” so this document proceeds,
“in the meantime, but ministers may and should
assist their princes, when they are required, in all
things agreeable to the Word, whether it be in council,

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 161

or Parliament, or otherwise, provided always they
neither neglect their own charges, nor, through
flattery of Princes, hurt the public estate of the Kirk.
But generally, we say, no person, under whatsoever
title of the Kirk and specially the abused titles in
Papistry, of Prelates, Convents, and Chapters, ought
to attempt any act in the Kirk's name, either in Council,
Parliament, or out of Council, having no commission |
of the reformed Kirk within this realm.” +

In regard to this matter of ministers holding any |
civil office or political appointment, a clearly expressed
enactment was passed by the General Assembly of
1638, declaring it both inexpedient and unlawful
for persons separated unto the gospel to hold civil
places or offices, as to be justices of peace, to sit and
determine in council, session, or exchequer, to sit or
vote in Parliament, to be judges or assessors in any
civil judicatory ; and presbyteries are ordained to pro-
ceed with the censures of the Kirk against such as
shall transgress herein in time coming.”

In August of the following year the Assembly
passed an enactment entitled “Act containing the
Causes and Remedy of the bygone Evils of this Kirk.”
Under the first of the evils is mentioned the “ giving
to persons merely ecclesiastical the power of both
swords, and to persons merely civil the power of the
keys and Kirk censures.” The fourth cause of sore

1 [Book of the Universal Kirk of Scotland, Part ii. p. 506. Dunlop’s
Collections, vol. ii. pp. 793, 794.]

2 [Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638-1842,

pp. 29, 30.]
L

162 CHURCH POWER

trouble to “the peace of this Kirk and kingdom” is |
stated to be: “ The civil places and power of Kirkmen,
their sitting in Session, Council, and Exchequer, their
riding, sitting, and voting in Parliament, and their
sitting on\ the Bench as Justices of Peace, which
according to the constitution of this Kirk, are in-
compatible with their spiritual sanction, lifting them
up above their brethren in worldly pomp, and do
tend to the hinderance of the ministery.”! This act
of Assembly was ratified and approved by an act of
the Scottish Parliament.

During the two periods of Episcopal domination in
Scotland, in the reigns of James VI. and Charles IL,
there was a reverting to the old pre-Reformation
practices. Prelates were promoted to the chief offices
of State. In a few years after James VI. took pos-
session of the English throne, John Spottiswoode was
made Archbishop of Glasgow, a Lord of Session, and
Privy Councillor for Scotland. In 1635, on the death of
the Earl of Kinnoul, he was promoted to the high office
of Lord Chancellor. In this capacity he presided over
the Court of High Commission, which had unlimited
jurisdiction, civil and ecclesiastical, in which his
bishops sat, and which could be constituted with a
quorum of five, all of whom might be, and generally
were bishops. There was thus erected in Scotland
an episcopal court which was absolute, and could
execute the severest penalties, secular and spiritual,

1 [Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638-1842,
pp. 36, 37.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 163

against any one who might be summoned to its bar. ;
We find the same state of matters again in the years
immediately following the Restoration. Archbishop
Sharp, as President of the Council and then as Chan-
cellor, along with his bishops in the Court of High
Commission, condemned without any opportunity of
appeal all who refused to bend to his views in regard
to the constitution and management of affairs
church and state, with fines and banishment accord-
ing to his arbitrary will. During the ascendancy o
episcopacy the civil government of the country was)
virtually in the hands of churchmen.

It thus appears that under the domination of popery
and prelacy in Scotland the two jurisdictions, civil
and ecclesiastical, were not kept distinct, but that
churchmen were allowed to exercise authority in
both departments, and to judge in civil cases as
well as in ecclesiastical. The presbyterian Protestant
Church consistently opposed all such confounding of
this distinction, and insisted that her ministers should
take part in civil matters only on occasions of emer-
gency, and never without the express permission o
the Church. At the same time, as we have seen,
the presbyterian Scots of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries were equally resolved to prevent
statesmen or any others not having the Church’s
authority from exercising jurisdiction or giving judg-
ment in matters ecclesiastical. They were jealous of
encroachment upon either side. The magistrate and
the minister each represented a distinct and independ-

164 CHURCH POWER

ent jurisdiction, and in their own province the one
owed no subordination to the other. It will after-
wards be discussed in what way and how far co-
ordinate jurisdiction is possible in the country.
Meanwhile we turn to the history of the Reformed
Scottish Church to see how the existence of two
jurisdictions or kingdoms was understood and ex-
pressed. Reference has often been made to the
conduct of Andrew Melville in his frequent and
stormy interviews with King James VL. and in some
quarters it has been represented that he made wild
and impracticable demands on behalf of ecclesiastical
liberty that no self-respecting sovereign could be
expected for a moment to consider, that with ultra-
montane arrogance he claimed an authority for the
Church and her decisions which would make that of
a king shadowy and incomplete. Even a church
historian ordinarily so fair-minded and calmly de-
liberative as the late Principal: John Cunningham
is inclined to regard Melville’s attitude as preposterous
and one which no one nowadays would think of
defending.* Let us examine impartially some of the
great churchman’s encounters with his sovereign.

1[“ The King was completely brow-beaten by the violence of Melville
at Falkland, and was glad to lay aside his testiness and affect to look
pleased. Such a scene as this reminds us of the days when popes put
their feet upon the neck of emperors; or when Martin of Tours, at a
public entertainment, after taking the wine cup himself, pushed it
past princes to a presbyter, remarking that the humblest of the order
was superior to kings. . . . The imperious advocate of High Church
principles, he may be fairly regarded as the Hildebrand of Presbytery.
He had acquired his opinions in Geneva, where he had lived and taught,
and where Calvin, differing from the other reformers, had maintained the

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 165

In February 1584, soon after the young King’s
escape from the Ruthven lords and the regaining of
ascendancy by the Earl of Arran, Andrew Melville
was summoned before the Council, charged with
having used treasonable language in one of his
sermons. As Principal of the New College, St
Andrews, he had preached there a sermon or
lecture on the words with which Daniel reminded
Belshazzar of the history of his father Nebuchad-
nezzar.

The Earl of Arran, now the King’s chief adviser, and
a bitter foe of the Church and of Melville in particular,
sent out spies to listen to the public utterances of all
the principal persons, and to report anything that
might seem to afford ground for a charge of criticising
or condemning any of his proceedings. The St
Andrews preacher had been warned by one of the
new courtiers, a friend and relative of his own, that
attempts were being made to poison the mind of the
King regarding him, and he was advised to take the
earliest opportunity of visiting the King and assuring
him of his loyalty and good faith. This he declined
to do, on the ground that it might be regarded as
implying on his part a consciousness of guilt, whereas
he was certain that none could show that he had ever
uttered a disloyal sentiment. He would cheerfully
obey the royal command were his advice required

autonomy of the Church, and left behind him this old Roman doctrine
as a special legacy to the Scottish Clergy.” Church History of Scotland,
vol. i. chap. xv. pp. 433, 470,]

1 [Sir Robert Melville.]

166 CHURCH POWER

about the affairs of the Church, or any explanations
of his conduct desired.

When, therefore, he received a mandate on account
of charges brought against him by Arran’s spies, he
immediately appeared before the Privy Council. In
a calm, respectful, and very complete manner he
repeated the substance of the sermon, declaring that
he gave the very words used as well as he could
remember, that he had always maintained the lawful-
ness of the King’s authority, and that he had spoken
nothing then or at any other time derogatory to that
authority.

He also produced a testimonial from the ‘ Rector,
Deans of Faculties, Professors, Regents and Masters
_ within the University of Saint Andrews,” bearing
thirty signatures, in which they declared that they,
“continual and diligent auditors of his doctrine, heard
nothing out of his mouth, neither in doctrine nor
application, which tended not directly to the glory of
God, and to the establishment of your Majesty’s
crown”; that in prayer he always commended the
King to the Divine protection; that he exhorted
subjects to be obedient ‘‘ to the meanest magistrates ” ;
and that all alleged against him to the contrary was
slanderous calumny.

Then for the information of the King and the
Government Melville made a full statement in regard
to what he actually said on that particular occasion,

1 [The testimonial with the signatures is given in full by Dr M‘Crie
in his Life of Andrew Melville, vol. i. note x. pp. 454-56.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 167

and also in regard to his ordinary manner of
preaching.

When the Council, notwithstandingall this, proceeded |
to the trial of the case in a formal way, the accused |
preacher at once protested against the jurisdiction thus|
claimed, on the ground that he was not accused of a civil)
offence, but of false teaching uttered in the pulpit.’
Such a contention before a well-constituted and fairly
conducted court is discussed without passion, and
without any notion that the advancing of such an
objection is in itself any slight or dishonour to the
court. But on this occasion the King and his
advisers chose to regard Melville’s objection as a
rejection of their authority, and an act of contumacy
and disloyalty. His objection, however, to the juris-
diction of the Council was not a complete disowning
the authority of the King and his Council. He simply
maintained that in the first instance any charge of
treasonable or objectionable utterance from the pulpit
should be brought before those courts which had the
direct oversight of his pastoral conduct. He contended
that if the Council became aware of any such charge
it should first call upon the Presbytery of the bounds
to deal with the case. It is evident that this did not
prejudice the action of the civil court, if, after pro-
cedure by the ecclesiastical authorities, it appeared
that any ground still lay for prosecuting a civil suit.?
Principal William Robertson will scarcely now be

1[The question is very fully discussed by Dr M‘Crie in his Life of
Melville, vol. i. chap. iv. pp. 206 et seq.]

168 CHURCH POWER

quoted as an authority in Scottish history; but as a
Church leader it might have been expected that he
would have attended to the express words used by
such a churchman as Andrew Melville. Yet he
represents Melville as contending that “the Presby-
tery of which he was a member had the sole right to
call him to account for words spoken in the pulpit.”
If this plea had been admitted, he says, “the Protestant
clergy would have become independent of the civil
magistrate,” and might have taught “ without fear or
control the most dangerous principles.” Dr John
Cunningham, of course, does not make this mistake,
but he criticises Melville's declinature just as if it had
been an absolute one? It seems to me that the
_ declinature on this occasion was eminently reasonable,
and that in consistency with his principles, which are
those of our presbyterian Church polity, he could not
have done less. The meaning of the King’s claim
must be read in the light of “the Black Acts” passed
by Parliament a few months later. In these infamous
enactments the King was declared to be supreme in
all causes and over all persons, and the declining of
the royal judgment was pronounced to be treason.
Without surrendering the case of his Church, Melville
could not have recognised the King’s supremacy over
all causes. If the Presbytery, upon its attention being
called to the matter, failed to take up the case or

1[ History of Scotland, 1809, vol. ii. p. 425.]

2[“ Few men will now defend the declinature of Melville: modern
sense and modern legislation have decided against it.” Church History,
vol. i. p. 374.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 169

to give it adequate attention, surely it was time
enough then for the Council to consider whether
there were not in it points that fell under its
jurisdiction.}

As to the dramatic style in which Melville indi-
cated that he had scriptural authority for the plea
which he advanced—“ lowsing a little Hebrew Byble
fra his belt and clanking it down on the burd before
the King and Chancelar” ?—we are not to take it for
granted that he did this rudely or with violence,
though the formal sentence pronounced against him
makes this statement. Melville himself promptly
denied the charge of Arran that he meant to scorn
the King and Council. ‘No, my lord,” he answered,
when the Chancellor, opening the book upon the
table and finding it Hebrew, said, ‘Sir, he scorns
your Majesty and Council”—‘“I scorn not; but with
all earnestness, zeal, and gravity, I stand for the
cause of Jesus Christ and His Kirk.” ¢

He was really proceeded against for so often and
so firmly declining his Majesty’s judgment, and for

1[“The question was not, Whether ministers be exempt from
the magistrates’ jurisdiction, nor, Whether the pulpit puts men in
liberty to teach treason without any civil cognisance and punishment.
Since the Reformation of religion no man in Scotland did ever assert
such things. But the question was, as Spotswood himself states it,
Whether the Council was a competent judge to Master Melville’s
doctrine im prima instantia: these were the express terms.” Baillie
in Answer to the Declaration subjoined to Historical Vindication, 1646.]

2 [James Melville’s Diary, Bannatyne Club Ed., p. 101.]

3 [“ Ansuering alsua maist proudlie, irreueventlie and contemptu-
ouslie.” M‘Crie’s Life, vol. i. note v. p. 457.]

4 [James Melville’s Diary, ut sup., p. 101.]

170 CHURCH POWER

objecting to a witness,! against whom, as a malicious
personal foe who had sworn to do him personal
violence if he got an opportunity, he had surely good
cause to object.

The head of his offending is concisely expressed in
the form of his sentence to be imprisoned in the Castle
of Blackness, when it is afirmed that “his Highness
and not the Kirk is Judge in the first instance in
causes of treason whatsoever.”? Whether Melville was
right in his view as to the court of first instance or
not, let us understand that the making of this claim
and not the manner of his doing so was the offence
for which he received sentence.

It is to be noted that in 1596, twelve years after
Melville’s trial, David Black, minister of St Andrews,
had the same charge brought against him of alleging
that any accusation of uttering treason in the pulpit
should be in the first instance investigated by the
Ecclesiastical Court, and defended himself in precisely
the same way.°

This was the unanimous opinion of all true Pres-
byterians, who were by far the most loyal of all the
inhabitants of Scotland in those days. They could
perceive no inconsistency between this plea and the pro-
fession and practice of hearty allegiance to their king.

Shortly before Black’s trial, in 1595, Melville
appeared at Falkland under a strong conviction of

1 [William Stewart, one of the pensioners of the Abbey of St Andrews,
known as the Accuser from his conduct on the present occasion. }
2(M‘Crie’s Life, ut sup.] 3 (Ibid. vol. i. chap. vi. pp. 395 et seq.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED sik'g |

the duty that he owed to his Church and his Prince
to let the latter know plainly what, little to his
liking, he had more than once before told him.
Calling the King “ God’s silly vassal,” and taking him
by the sleeve, the undaunted presbyter, “ through
much hot reasoning and many interruptions,” said
this in effect:—‘‘There are two kings and two
kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the
King, and His Kingdom the Kirk, whose subjec
King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom hej
is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member.
And those whom Christ has called and commanded}
to watch over His Kirk, and govern His spiritual
Kingdom, have sufficient power of Him, and authority |
so to do, both together and severally, the which no
Christian King nor Prince should control or dis-
charge, but fortify and assist, otherwise they are not}
faithful subjects nor members of Christ. And, Sir, /
when you were in your swaddling cloths [cloutes]
Christ Jesus reigned freely in this land in spite of all
His enemies, and His officers and ministers convened |
and assembled for the ruling and weal of His Kirk, |
which was ever for your welfare, defence, and pre-
servation also, when these same enemies were seeking
your destruction and cutting off.” }

To any one who reads the story of Andrew Mel-
ville’s life as given in the wonderfully vivid record
of his genial and talented nephew, he will appear as
true a statesman as a churchman, loyal as very few,

1 [James Melville’s Diary, ut sup., pp. 245-46.]

172 CHURCH POWER

if any, of the Scottish politicians of that age were
loyal. He was plain spoken in his interviews with
King James, not because of any ignoble pleasure
that he took in showing what liberties he could use
with the highest in the land, but just because of his
sincere endeavour to save his sovereign from the
selfish designs of unprincipled courtiers and from his
own inconceivable folly. That wretched kingcraft
on which James prided himself, which was neither
more nor less than common lying, was enough to
rouse to indignation a much less inflammable spirit
than that of Melville. We love him all the more
for the violence of his ebullitions. ‘‘If my anger
go downward,” he said to one of his advisers
counselling prudence, “set your foot on it and put
it out; but if it go wpward, suffer it to rise to its
place.” Kings too often have been, and King
James VI. and his unhappy son were in parti-
cular, surrounded by an atmosphere of falsehood.
It is well for them now and again to hear the truth,
and in such a case the truth could not be told in
smooth and courtly language. Yet Melville, though
plain and clear of speech as he needed to be if he
was to be of any use, was always polite. He always
respected, and insisted upon others respecting the
royal prerogative. Dishonour to the King equally
with dishonour to the Church was dishonour to God.

Robert Baillie, in his Historical Vindication of the

1[Livingstone’s Memerable Characteristics. Wodrow Select Biogra-
phies, vol. i. p. 303.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 173

Government of the Church of Scotland (1646), wrote
in reply to the calumnies of two reckless and un-
principled men, John Maxwell and Patrick Adamson.
Dr John Maxwell, the deposed Bishop of Ross, declared
to be an unpardonable incendiary by the Parliament
of both kingdoms, had written an anonymous tract in
1644, which he republished with some alterations two
years afterwards, and entitled, after the absurd fashion
of the age, The Burden of Issachar. Patrick Adamson,
Archbishop of St Andrews, had written a vindication
of the Scottish Court under the title of a Declaration
of the King’s Mayesty’s Intention and meaning towards
the late acts of Parliament... Some hot-headed
Independent or Sectary had republished these two
pamphlets, thinking them injurious to the cause of
the Presbyterians.? His reply to Maxwell, Baillie
entitles The Unloading of Issachar’s Burden; and
certainly, if he tossed out the stuff somewhat roughly,
he emptied the bag very completely and threw it
aside quite collapsed. In dealing with Adamson’s so-
called King’s Declaration, Baillie showed from the
writer's own confession that the Archbishop was the
actual author of it, and that it contained vile and un-
founded aspersions on the banished lords and on the

1 [Full information regarding this tract will be found in the Wodrow
Miscellany, pp. 473-76. It is given at length in Calderwood’s History,
vol. iv. pp. 254-69.]

2[“ At this time” (June 26th, 1646) “ I yoke with Maxwell and
Adamson, who, with based pamphlets, have done our Church here much
harm. The Sectaries, of purpose, reprinted their books, and carefully

spread them ; but I shall make them repent it.” Baillie’s Letters and
Journals, vol. ii. p. 7.]

174 CHURCH POWER

proceedings of the Church. It was part of James's
despicable kingcraft to authorise and make use of
such a document as long as possible and when it
became evident that it could no longer be used, to
throw the blame of its design and publication upon
another. In his replies to both these pamphlets, Baillie
in a thoroughly manly and reasonable way defends
Melville, upon whom a large share of the abuse had
fallen. He repudiates as an utterly baseless calumny
the statement advanced by both Maxwell and Adam-
son that the ministers of the sixteenth century
claimed that any one preaching heresy should not be
summoned before the civil authorities and punished
by them. All Melville’s plea, says Baillie, was that
a minister of the Church of Scotland and a member
of the University of St Andrews, being privileged
by the law of the kingdom, was not necessitated at
the first instance to answer before the Privy Council
for a passage of his sermon which most falsely was
said to be treasonable. This was just the position
maintained by Scottish Churchmen without modi-
fication from the Reformation onward. Melville’s
claim was the claim of Rutherfurd, Gillespie, Baillie,
and all true constitutional Presbyterians. What none
of them happily could ever be persuaded to tolerate
was the assumption on the King’s part of universal
supremacy over all causes civil and ecclesiastical.
Had this been allowed it would have put an individual,
the King, not always wise, indeed very seldom so,
irresponsibly above all laws human and divine.

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 175

Well for us, surely as citizens as well as churchmen,
that in this point our ecclesiastical forefathers re-
solutely refused to yield a single inch. Maxwell and
Adamson were both influenced against the discipline
of the Church of Scotland asa child’s wrath is kindled
against the rod that scourges him, and as a dog snarls
at the stone that hits him. They represented the
General Assembly as exercising a tyrannical power
in matters alike of Church and State. Baillie answers
that the Assembly never sought to exercise any powers
but those which the King and the constitution of the
realm authorise. At the same time our Scottish ec-
clesiastics have always been careful to maintain that
this power did not come to them by the permission of
the King nor from the authority of the State. They
had their jurisdiction from the same source as the
King had his. There was no idea on their part that
they owed their jurisdiction to the civil power. With
them ecclesiastical jurisdiction is an ordinance of God ;
it would be treason and disloyalty on the Churchman’s
part were he to submit himself to any human authority.
Church and State have co-ordinate jurisdictions.
Hach had its own well-defined sphere. The duty of
the State towards the Church is, not only to abstain
from all interference, but also to take order that no
one use violence in resisting or restraining the Church
from the free exercise of her powers. Each may advise
the other, but the one ought not to dictate to the other.

All our old Scottish divines use the term jurisdic-
tion, and they all apply it to that power of govern-

176 CHURCH POWER

ment that is inherent in the Church and which she
has directly from God. Thus John Welsh of Ayr,
writing from Blackness in 1606, states as the special
cause of his imprisonment these two points: “ First,
that Christ is the Head of His Church; secondly,
that she is free in her government from all other
jurisdiction except Christ’s.” +

Precisely to the same effect had the Church of
Scotland in 1585 addressed the King in certain
Animadversions of offences conceived upon the Acts
of Parliament | Black Acts] made im the year 1584.
“The power of binding and loosing,” said “the
commissioners of the Kirk to the King’s Majesty a
the Parliament of Linlithgow,” ‘‘ which is called the
power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, con-
sisteth not only in these points [preaching and
ministration of sacraments], but also in judgment,
jurisdiction and removing of offences out of the Kirk
of God, and excommunication to be pronounced
against the disobedient, by these that are office-
bearers within the same.... To confound the
jurisdictions civil and ecclesiastical, is that thing
wherein all men of good judgment have justly found
fault with the Pope of Rome, who claimeth to himself
the power of both the swords; which is als [as]
great a fault to a civil magistrate to claim or usurp,
and specially to judge upon doctrine, errors, and

1 [Letter to Dame Lilias Graham, Countess of Wigton. This famous
letter of Welsh is given in full by Wodrow in his History of Mr John
Welsh. Select Biographies, vol. i. pp. 18-26, and abridged in Young’s
Infe of John Welsh, chap. viii. pp. 252-57. ]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 177

heresies, he not being placed in ecclesiastical function
to interpret the Scriptures. . . . And it is of truth,
that there is a spiritual jurisdiction granted to the
Kirk of God by His Word (which maketh no de-
rogation to the jurisdiction of earthly princes) whereof
the office-bearers within the Kirk in this realm have
been in peaceable possession and use these twenty-
four years by-past, with the exercise whereof followed
no trouble, but great quietness in the Kirk and Com-,
monwealth.” }

The Second Book of Discipline, “according to
which the Church Government is established by
law, 1592 and 1690,” declares in the opening chapter
that ‘the Kirk has a certain Power granted by God,
according to the which it uses a proper Jurisdiction
and Government, exercised to the comfort of the Kirk.
This Power ecclesiastical is an authority granted by God
the Father, through the Mediator Jesus Christ unto His
Kirk gathered, and having the ground in the Word of
God, to be put in execution by them unto whom the
spiritual Government of the Kirk by lawful calling is
committed. . . . This Power is diversely used. For
sometimes it is severally exercised, chiefly by the
Teachers, sometimes conjunctly by mutual consent of
them that bear the office and charge, after the form of
Judgment. The former is commonly called potestas
ordinis, and the other potestas jurisdictions. These
two kinds of Power have both one Authority, one
Ground, one final Cause, but are different in the

1 [Calderwood’s History, vol. iv. pp. 450-453. ]
M

178 CHURCH POWER

Manner and Form of Execution, as is evident by the
speaking of our Master in the sixteenth and eighteenth
of Matthew.” }

In June 1592 the Scottish Parliament passed an act
ratifying the General Assemblies, Provincial Synods,
Presbyteries, and particular Sessions of the Church,
and declaring them, with the jurisdiction and disct-
pline belonging to them, to be in all time coming
most just, good and godly, notwithstanding whatso-
ever statutes, acts and laws, canon, civil, or municipal,
made to the contrary. This important statute was
re-enacted and ratified in the Revolution Settlement
of 1690, and still continues to be the charter of the
Church of Scotland’s liberties.”

At this point and in this connection I wish to call
- attention to a lecture by the Rev. Dr Mair of Earlston
on Jursdiction in Matters Ecclesiastical. Dr
Mair insists upon giving an extremely narrow and
highly technical interpretation of the term jurisdiction.
After calling attention to the fact that the Statute
book of the kingdom makes acknowledgment of the
truth that ‘‘ The Lord Jesus, as king and head of His
Church hath therein appointed a government in the
hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil

1 [Dunlop’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 760.]

2 [Act Parl. Scot. iii. 541. “This statute has the vague and unde-
scriptive title of ‘Act for abolishing of the actis contrair the true
religioun.”” M‘Crie’s Life of Melville, vol. i. chap. v. p. 319 n.]

3 [Jurisdiction in Matters Ecclesiastical being part of a Lecture delivered
in the University of Edinburgh. By the Rev. William Mair, D.D.,
Earlston. Author of “Digest of Church Law,” etc. etc. William
Blackwood & Sons, 1896.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 179

magistrate,” he remarks that in his judgment “it
ought to be very gratifying to the whole Church of
Christ that the Statute-book of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland bears” such an acknowledg-
ment. But important and gratifying as this acknowledg-
ment is supposed to be to the whole Church of Christ,
“it would be practically worthless,” says Dr Mair, “‘ but
for another great fact.” That great fact is stated in
these terms: “The State not only acknowledges in
the Church a right and power bestowed by heaven,
but itself also makes a grant to the Church of another
corresponding but distinct power, viz., the power or
right to exercise within the kingdom of Scotland that
power which is acknowledged to belong to it from its
connection with the kingdom of heaven—to exercise
it without challenge, as freely as the courts of the
earthly kingdom execute their powers. It is evident
from history and logic alike that the State might have
refused this. It is this power granted by the State
that is called jurisdiction.”

Here I would call attention to a difference in
expression which distinguishes the important Act of
1592 from the statement of Dr Mair. The statute of
Parliament “decerns and declares” the jurisdiction
and discipline “to be maist just, gude, and godlie in
themselves.” Dr Mair speaks of the State as making
a grant of power to exercise an acknowledged right,
and calls this the conferring of jurisdiction. It is
evidently jurisdiction in one sense that the Act of
Parliament declares, and jurisdiction in another sense

180 CHURCH POWER

that according to the lecturer the State confers upon
the Church. The jurisdiction of which the statute
speaks is a power inherent in the Church of Christ,
whether established or non-established. The Church
has it altogether independently of any attitude hostile
or friendly which the State may assume towards
her. Of course the civil power may refuse to acknow-
ledge it, just as Edward I. refused to acknowledge
Scotland’s independence ; and it may, by the applica-
tion of force, put an outward and physical restraint
upon as many Church members as come within its
sweep from exercising that jurisdiction. As Edward
was able to torture and slay the patriot Wallace, but
was not able to overthrow or destroy the independence
of the nation, so James had it in his power to im-
prison and banish Andrew Melville. He could silence
and outlaw godly ministers for affirming the inde-
pendent jurisdiction of Christ’s Church, but only in
the same way as brutal highwaymen may overpower
the unarmed and comparatively feeble wayfarer. It
is certainly misleading to introduce the statement, as
Dr Mair does, that the State might refuse to make a
grant to the Church of power to exercise her juris-
diction. That statement ought to bear the meaning,
which, however, it cannot bear that the State has it
in its option to make this grant or to withhold it.
For in reality the civil power has no grant to make ;
it has simply to observe and keep within the limits of
its own jurisdiction.

The Church that stands by the Second Book of

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 181

Discipline, agreed upon in the General Assembly of
1578, revived and ratified by the Assembly of 1638,
and recognised as the true and approved government
of the Church by the Parliaments of 1592 and 1690,
can never admit the conferring on her of a power by
the State to exercise a right, or a power, or juris-
diction, or whatever else you please, for this she had
exercised independently of any other, before ever the
State had even declared her jurisdiction, or thought of
offering to grant her the power of exercising it. For
thirty years at least the Church of Scotland exercised
this power before the State declared that she had it.
The exercise of this Church power is in no way
determined by the State assuming either to grant
or to withhold it. During the period referred to the
Church had her courts in which, and by means of
which, she exercised the powers that she claimed to
have of inherent right without waiting to obtain any
power from the State, without apparently entertaining
any notion that she had no jurisdiction until she
received such grant of power from the State.

Then further, it is quite evident that our Church
fathers and contemporary statesmen had no such
understanding of the term jurisdiction as that which
Dr William Mair assumes, With them jurisdiction
did not mean a grant of power to use a power, but
that power itself which they regarded as embracing in
it the power to use it. According to them jurisdiction
was the power to determine and judge in all matters
pertaining to the Church; and the Church possessing

182 CHURCH POWER

this exclusive power was not any particular church, or
necessarily a church possessing any sort of State
connection or sanction, but the Church of Christ, in
her corporate capacity exercising her powers through
regularly constituted courts. These courts were insti-
tuted by the Church herself. Such an institution of

them made them courts of the Church. There were

Sessions, Presbyteries and Assemblies in which juris-
diction was exercised, before any recognition was given
to them by the State. They were as truly courts
before, as they were after, that recognition was
given.

Dr Mair says that to “managing bodies” of
denominations in Scotland other than that of the
Established Church “the word ‘court’ is not allowed
except in courtesy.”! If this were so, then it would
necessarily follow—what some have actually said,
though Dr Mair is too courteous to affirm it—that
all religious bodies in Scotland except the Established

1[Dr Mair is explaining the position taken up by the Judges of
the Court of Session in the Cardross case of 1858 and the Auchter-
gaven one of 1870. The position, according to Dr Mair, differed in
these two cases in this way: “If the body complained of has juris-
diction in the matter in hand, whatever that matter may be, the civil
court has not jurisdiction and will not interfere. This was declared
to be the case of our Church [in the Auchtergaven case]. If the body
complained of has no jurisdiction [the Free Church condition in the
Cardross case], the relation of its members to one another and to its
managing bodies (for the word ‘ court’ is not allowed except in courtesy)
is that of contract, and the proceedings are subject to review, and to
reduction to the effect of giving damages, whatever the matter of the
contract. The judges do not, as is asserted, insist on construing their
relations as civil contract. The two positions (and there are no other)
are jurisdiction or contract, whether in things spiritual or civil. In our
Church it is jurisdiction, and in the others contract.” Lecture, p. 15.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 183

Church are only by courtesy called churches. It is
the Church as such that claims to constitute these
courts, and if a religious body cannot itself constitute
these courts it can only be because it is not a church
in the strict and accurate use of the word.

The United Free Church of Scotland claims to be
of the Church of Scotland, not in the exclusive sense
of unchurching any Christian body in the realm
acting through regularly constituted courts, but as
being one of the branches of the Church of Christ in
the land. All the elements of which the United
Church is composed—Seceders and Relief men, Free
Churchmen, Original Seceders, and Reformed Pres-
byterians—have never by their courts or in their
authoritative documents said or done anything to
invalidate their claim to be still within the Church
of Scotland, though not within the Establishment.
If they were of the Church before their repudiation
of State encroachment and interference, they are of
the Church still.

It seems to me that Dr Mair’s endeavour to rid
himself and his Church from the reproach of main-
taining an Erastian theory of the relation of Church
and State has not been successful. He not only
allows the State to grant a power of exercising a
heaven-given right, which right admittedly it never
did and never can confer, he also allows the State
to declare that that only is the Church which accepts
of this grant of power, and then, by just and
necessary consequence, he allows the State to un-

184 CHURCH POWER

church all bodies of Christians who do not accept
from it this grant of jurisdiction, by refusing to
admit that they can exercise the rights of a Church
by constituting their “ managing bodies” into Courts
of Christ’s Church. This, in my judgment, is rank
Erastianism, not a whit modified by the attempt to
represent the assumption of the State as the granting
of a power to exercise a power, and not the granting
of that power itself.

The earlier Scottish churchmen, Gillespie, Ruther-
furd, Baillie, Brown, and a host of others are- most
pronounced in their opposition to EHrastianism in
every shape and form. MRutherfurd keenly opposes
the views of the Anglican Erastians, Bilson, Hooker
and such like, who made Christ’s Kingdom altogether
7 spiritual, mystical and invisible, so that Christ is not
a King to bind the external man or to care for the
external government of His own house, which, like
all other external things, they understand to belong to
the civil magistrate. This theory they had derived
from Constantine, who said to the bishops of his day:
“God has made you bishops of the internal affairs of
the Church, but He has appointed me the bishop of
its external affairs.” In opposition to this the Scottish
theologian maintained that ‘“‘ He who is the only Head,
Lord, and King of His Church must govern the politic,
external body His Church perfectly by laws of His
own spiritual policy; and that more perfectly than
any earthly monarch or state doth their subjects, or

1 [See Note on page 190.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 185

any commanders, or any lord, or master of family
doth their army, soldiers, and members of their
family.” }

As to the duty of the magistrate in reference to the¢
Church there are differences of opinion and statement |
among Scottish ecclesiastical writers. They were all
convinced that the magistrate ought to interest him-
self actively in the affairs of the Church, so as to
secure to it the unhindered exercise of all its powers
and privileges ; that he ought not only to discourage
but to suppress any sect or heresy whose presence in |

the land would be inimical to the interests of the |

Church ; and that it is especially his duty to provide |
for the maintenance of ministers and for the erectionand |
upholding of a sufficient number of edifices throughout
the land, so that the people everywhere may con-|
veniently attend the preaching of the Word. Durham,
in his Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scot-
land, or Treatise concerning Scandal, goes further.
He holds that the civil ruler may order subjects “to |
keep the Ordinances.” This, he says, “is but a con-|
straining of them to the means whereby Religion
worketh, and a making them, as it were, to give God
a hearing, leaving their yielding and consenting to
Him, when they have heard Him, to their own wills,
which cannot be forced; yet it is reason that, when
God cometh by His Ordinances to treat with a people,

that a magistrate should so far respect His glory and.

)
|

1 Rutherfurd’s Divine Right of Church Government and Excommuna-
cation, 1646. Section II. p. 13.

186 CHURCH POWER

their good as to interpose his authority to make them,
hear.”! Besides this, Durham requires the magistrate}
in many ways to interfere in matters that to us seem
quite outside of his jurisdiction. If ministers and
Church officers are negligent then magistrates may
and ought to “put” them to their duty in trying,
discovering, convincing, etc., such as by their corrupt
doctrine may hazard others.”? He is to inhibit
heretics from venting their doctrines, not forcing
their consciences, but only restraining them from
hurting those of others. If heretics utter and publish
corrupt doctrine the magistrate “may and ought to
destroy such books . . . and inhibit and stop print-
ing of them, or actual selling, spreading or transport-
ing of them,” as he would stop the “carrying of
suspected or forbidden goods. For it is no just liberty
to have liberty to hurt others.”* Again, the magis-
trate ‘“‘may and ought to restrain idle and vagabond
travelling of such suspected persons” and “ constrain
them to follow some lawful occupation and to be
diligent therein.” 4 Finally, the civil ruler ‘‘ may and
ought to restrain and censure all blasphemous and
irreverent expressions and speeches against the Majesty
of God and His Ordinances, and all calumnies and
bitterness against faithful Ministers or Professors. . .
and to make such incapable of public places of trust,
and remove them from such.” 5

1 [Durham on Scandal, Part III. chap. xiv. p. 231.]
2 [Ibid. p. 232.] 3 [Ibid.] 4 [Ibid. pp. 232, 3.]
6 [Ibid. p. 233.]

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 187

All these functions of the magistrate, however, are
evidently not interferences with the external govern-
ment of the Church, but rather assistance given to
secure the execution of ecclesiastical decisions. The
only apparent exception is the injunction to the
magistrate to urge negligent office-bearers to take up
and deal with cases of false teaching. At most this
amounted only to the civil court calling the attention
of ecclesiastics to some case apparently overlooked,
and asking that an investigation should be made,
without in any way interfering with the process or
the judgment.

George Gillespie puts the relation of the magistrate|
to the Church thus: He is keeper, defender, and
guardian of both tables, but neither judge nor inter-
preter of Scripture. The power of the Christia
magistrate is cumulative not privative in relation t
the Church. He may and ought to act with, bu
neither for nor against Church officers. Gillespie!
expresses the distinction of things inward and things
outward differently from Rutherfurd ; but his mean- |
ing is found to be practically the same. ee
to him the external inspection or administration of
the magistrate in relation to religion is twofold : First, |
corrective, by external punishment ; second, auxiliary,
by external benefit and adminicles. The Church’s
part is directive—she directs the magistrate. He
says to the Church as Moses said to Hobab, Thou
mayst be to us imstead of eyes. The magistrate’s

1 Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, p. 116.

188 CHURCH POWER

part is coercive in compelling the obstinate and
unruly to submit to the presbyterial or synodical
sentence.*

With all their differences in the practical working
out of the doctrine the old theologians of Scotland
were unanimous in maintaining that there is only
one Head of the Church, and that He is Head over
all that pertains to the Church. It is here, by their
maintaining the exclusive Headship of Christ, that
they show themselves thoroughgoing Anti-Erastians.
Everything belonging to the doctrine worship, govern-
ment and discipline of the Church must be deter-
mined by Christ as its Head. To Him the Church
must be subject not in some things, but in all things.
These divines are not forgetful of the universal Lord-
ship of Christ. They are well aware of, and often
bring to remembrance the fact that not only were all
things created by Him, but also for Him, that He is
Lord of all. He is Lord over all men, Turk and
Pagan as well as Christian. The conduct of all His
creatures ought to be determined by His will. He
has expressed His will toward all as Lord, and
upon them He may enforce His will by the outward
influences of His providences and the external opera-
tions of His laws. But Christ is Head over all
things only to His Church. As such He expresses
and enforces His will differently from the way in
which He expresses and enforces it as Lord. The
Lord stands outside and issues His commands as to

1 Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, p. 122.

THE JURISDICTION CLAIMED 189

subjects and servants who wait listening for the word
of command coming to them from without. The
Head is part of the organism from which go forth
to the several members, not only directions but also
inclinations and enablings for the doing of that which
is required.

In opposition to the Socinians of their day, who
held that Jesus Christ is King only as Mediator,
with no such universal kingship as would prove

Him to be the equal of God the Father, the early

theologians of Scotland distinguished a twofold,

kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Eternal
Son of God He is King over all creatures, but as
Mediator He is Head of His own people in His
own Church only. With the Reformed theologians
generally they distinguished a Kingdom of Christ
that is natural to Him and a Kingdom that is
bestowed upon Him.

It is as Mediator that Christ governs His Church,
tuling in it with undivided sway, through officers
of his own appointment who govern in His name
and according to His laws. No one can be allowed
to share His rule. The one Head, the Divine
Mediator, has no vicar upon earth, either Prince or
Priest. The power of the Church, the sole source
of her jurisdiction lies in this, that He to whom All
authority hath been given in heaven and on earth is
Head over all things to the Church, and has said
to the members of His Church, Lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world.

NOTE.

It is right to say that Dr Mair, having seen a
report of this Lecture as delivered, has written pro-
testing strongly against his being ranked or regarded
as an Erastian, and he claims to have made it manifest
that he strenuously opposes what he is here said to
have accepted. No one can wish to impute to Dr
Mair an opinion he disclaims. But his statements
and his arguments are open to discussion. Dr Mair
based his defence of the position of his church on the
distinction, as he explains it, between jurisdiction and
power of government. Mr Macpherson held that Dr
Mair’s explanation and application of this distinction
gave away the spiritual liberty which Dr Mair pro-
fessed to defend. ‘The reader must be left to form his
own conclusion.

190

LECTURE VI.

WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS OF
DIVINE RIGHT.

OnE of the many interesting figures in the West-
minster Assembly, of whom we know little and would
like to know much, is Dr Thomas Coleman, Orientalist
and Hrastian. He was a man held in high esteem for
his learning and his eloquence. From his early rural
charge in Lincolnshire he had been driven by the
Cavaliers. He then served the Church in one of the
London parishes, and was chosen as a member of the
venerable Assembly, and took an active part in its
debates. He ranged himself as a vigorous supporter
of Hrastian views, alongside of Selden, Lightfoot,
Hussey and Pryne. Of all the divines at Westminster,
only Lightfoot and he advocated thoroughgoing
Erastianism. Their arguments turned mainly upon
a particular understanding, interpretation and appli-
cation, of Old Testament institutions.

On the 30th July 1645 Coleman was appointed to
preach before the House of Commons. In his auditory
on that occasion he had a much larger number of
sympathisers than he had among the divines. He
took the opportunity to express his mind clearly and

strongly as to the Christian magistrate as such bein
gly g §
191

192 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

a governor in the Church. Before this, on two
important occasions, he had argued in the Assembly
against the opinion that the eighteenth chapter of
St Matthew and the fifth chapter of First Corinthians
set forth any distinction between civil and ecclesias-
tical government. In his sermon he maintained that
the pressing of the Divine Right was the chief cause
of disunion and difference in the Assembly. Two
parties, he said, had come up to their meetings with
biased judgments. The Commissioners from Scotland
were for the Divine Right of presbytery; the In-
dependents for that of congregational government.
His advice was that they should establish as few
things as possible by Divine Right. If a claim of
that kind be made on behalf of any institution let it
be made good by Scripture that clearly proves the
case. As for himself he could never understand how
in one state there could be two co-ordinate govern-
ments exempt from relative superiority and inferiority.
He knew of no Scripture which supported any such
notion. The fifth chapter of First Corinthians did
not lay hold of his conscience for excommunication ;
and as for the eighteenth chapter of St Matthew he
wondered that anyone should ever have thought of so
applying it. For ruling elders and church discipline
he found no Divine or scriptural warrant. This being
so, he said, lay no more burden of government upon
the shoulders of ministers than Christ hath plainly
laid upon them. Of other work they already have
abundance to exercise their;energies and occupy their

OF DIVINE RIGHT 193

time. “As the King of Sodom said to Abraham, Give
me the persons and take the goods to thyself, so say I,
Give us the doctrine, take you the government.”
Christ has placed a government in the Church : but of
government, said Coleman, distinct from magistracy,
I find no trace. This government of the Christian
magistrate is given to Christ as Mediator in His
Church.

This, of course, was rank, undisguised Erastianism.
It was not merely an avowal of State interference in
Church affairs, but the denial of Church government
altogether. It was an unreserved acceptance and
application ‘of the dictum of Constantine ; God made
you churchmen bishops of the internal affairs of the
Church ; but He has made me the bishop of its external
affairs. By the internal affairs of the Church, Con-
stantine and Coleman understood preaching and the
administration of the sacraments; by the external her
government and discipline in all their departments.
All this was perfectly to the taste of the Erastians in
the House of Commons.

Coleman’s sermon, however, was regarded as highly
offensive by the Assembly of Divines. The delivery
of it at that particular juncture and occasion seemed
little short of contempt. For just before this the
Assembly had been for some time occupied in drawing
up a petition for presentation to the House of
Commons. The object of the document was to secure
the establishment of church courts by which dis-

cipline might be exercised so that ignorant and
N

194 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

scandalous persons might be debarred from the Lord’s
Table, and thus that holy ordinance guarded from
profanation and contempt. It was ready for pre-
sentation when Coleman, apparently the only member
of the Assembly who had opposed the petition, fore-
stalled the action of the body to which he belonged
by discussing the subject at length in his sermon, and
endeavouring to prejudice the Commoners against the
document which, only two days later, would be laid
before them. This was sharp practice. Naturally
the Assembly resented the unfair advantage of his
position which the preacher had taken. On the day
following the delivery of the sermon, Coleman was
called to account in the Jerusalem Chamber, and it
was proposed to make a representation to the House
- of Commons upon the subject. Meantime an oppor-
tunity was given the offender of explaining or
retracting what had given offence. Although he
could not conscientiously retract, he expressed himself
as sorry for having given offence, and promised not
to increase that offence by publishing the discourse.
Those, however, who had been gratified by his ex-
position and defence of their Erastian opinions,
prevailed upon him to withdraw this promise, and
the sermon was published.

George Gillespie of Edinburgh had preached before
the House of Lords shortly after Coleman’s appearance
in the other House. He took no particular notice of
Coleman’s performance or the subject with which it
dealt. The publication, however, seemed to the eager

OF DIVINE RIGHT 195

young Scottish controversialist a challenge to enter
the lists and to demolish what appeared to him
the groundless and mischievous statements of the
Erastian champion. In the controversy that ensued
Gillespie wrote three tracts: A Brotherly Examina-
tion,| Nihil Respondes,? and Male Audis? Coleman,
he contended, had offered four rules as tending to unity
and the healing of prevailing controversies about
Church government. But the proposed cure was
worse than the disease. Instead of bringing about
agreement he would have his hand against every man

1[A Brotherly Examination of some passages of Mr Coleman’s late
sermon upon Job xi. 20, as it is now printed and published. By which
he hath to the great offence of very many endeavoured to strike at the
very root of all spiritual and ecclesiastical government, contrary to the
Word of God, the Solemn League and Covenant, other Reformed
Churches, and the votes of the honourable Houses of Parliament, after
advice had with the reverend and learned Assembly of Divines. By
George Gillespie, Minister at Edinburgh, London, 1645.]

2 [Nihil Respondes ; or, A Discovery of the extreme unsatisfactoriness
of Mr Coleman’s Piece, published last week under the title of “A
Brotherly Examination re-examined.” Wherein his self-contradictions ;
his yielding of somethings, and not answering to other things objected
against him; his abusing of Scripture; his errors in Divinity ; his
abusing of the Parliament and endangering their authority ; his abusing
of the Assembly ; his calumnies, namely, against the Church of Scot-
land and against myself ; the repugnancy of his doctrine to the Solemn
League and Covenant :—are plainly demonstrated. By George Gillespie,
Minister at Edinburgh. London, 1645.]

3 [Male Audis ; or, An Answer to Mr Coleman’s Male Dicis ; Wherein
the repugnancy of his Erastian doctrine to the Word of God, to the
Solemn League and Covenant, and to the Ordinances of Parliament ;
also his contradictions, tergiversations, heterodoxies, calumnies, and per-
verting of testimonies, are made more apparent than formerly. Together
with some animadyersions upon Mr MHussey’s plea for Christian
magistracy ; showing that in divers of the aformentioned particulars he
hath miscarried as much as, and in some particulars more than, Mr
Coleman. By George Gillespie, Minister at Edinburgh. London, 1646.]

196 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

and every man’s hand against him. Gillespie at once
joins issue with the Erastian over his treatment of the
jus divinum, the claim of Divine Right in the deter-
mining of Church government. Coleman had said,
“ Establish as few things by divine right as can well
be.” This would mean, said the Scot, “as little fine
gold, and as much dross as can well be. What you
take from the word of God is fine ‘gold tried in the
fire’; but an holy thing of man’s devising is the dross
of silver.” And so Gillespie would have as many
things established jure divino as can possibly be.
With the skill of a trained and experienced con-
troversialist he insisted in tying down his antagonist
to the precise point in dispute. It was not, “‘ Whether
this or that form of Church government be jure divino ;
- but, whether a Church government be jure divino.”
This brings out clearly what our old divines mean
when in their discussions on Church government they
plead for a Divine Right. They insisted that any
scheme of Church government which a particular or
national Church proposed to set up must make good
its claim from the precept and pattern of Scripture.
This claim of a jus divinum is often represented as an
arrogant assumption. But it should be remembered
that it has been and is made, not only by presbyterians,
but also by episcopalians and by congregationalists.
It may be, and often has been very arrogantly ex-
pressed. The arrogancy, however, is in the manner
of expressing the claim, not in the claim itself. To
claim for presbytery, prelacy or congregationalism a

OF DIVINE RIGHT 197

Divine Right is arrogant only if those making the
claim have not considered and made good the fact as
to whether there is such a thing as Divine Right in
Church government at all.

Coleman says there is no such thing as Divine
Right in the Church because there is no such thing as
Church government. Government, according to him,
is only in the hands of the Christian magistrate.1_ As
Gillespie shows this is really equivalent to a fourth
claim for Divine Right, that of the Erastian alongside
of those of the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian and the
Independent. The Erastian claims that there is a jus
divinum for the magistrate rather than for the ruling
elder, the prelate or the body of the Christian people
exercising the government in ecclesiastical affairs. In
contradistinction to the other three he asserts that of
the four departments—doctrine, worship, government
and discipline—only the firsttwo are under the direction
of Church officers, while the other two are under the
control of the civil power. Thus the Erastian claims
for his theory the sanction of a Divine Right.

Coleman, no less than Rutherfurd and Gillespie,
argued from Scripture texts, and like them, too,
largely relied upon Old Testament patterns and
examples. Selden, Lightfoot and Coleman were all
great rabbinists, and often dazzled and disconcerted

1[“ A Christian magistrate, as a Christian magistrate, is a governor
in the Church. Of other governments, beside magistracy, I find no
institution ; of them I do. .. . To rob the kingdom of Christ of the
magistrate, and his governing power, I cannot excuse, no, not from a
kind of sacrilege, if the magistrate be His.” Sermon ut sup.]

198 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

their opponents by displays of curious, out of the way
erudition. Gillespie meets them on their own chosen
field, and in the first Book of Aaron's Rod Blossom-
ing, consisting of thirteen chapters and an appendix,
sets himself to prove that Jewish “Church govern-
ment supplies arguments in his favour rather than
against his position.

Through seventy-four large, closely-printed pages
he labours to show that the Jewish State and the
Jewish Church were distinct, that there was among
the Jews an ecclesiastical excommunication, and that
scandalous, notorious and presumptuous offenders
against the moral law, though circumcised and not
ceremonially unclean, were excluded from participa-
_ tion in the sacrament of the Passover.

All the parties, therefore, who engaged in this
debate were agreed that a Divine Right of Church
government existed; they differed as to what form
of government could make this claim.

The real point in dispute was not quite fairly put
by Coleman when he said, Establish as few things
as possible by Divine Right. But the question was
not how many or how few things should have Divine
Right claimed for them, but rather what things have
a right to the claim. I am quite aware of the
importance of forbearing to make a claim of right on
behalf of details of worship and government which
are not clearly determined by any principle laid down
in the Word of God. I believe mistakes have been
made by representatives of all the different parties

OF DIVINE RIGHT 199

claiming Scripture prescription for institutions and
ceremonies which are not prescribed, at least in
regard to their particular pattern or details. We
may consider at a later stage how far and in what
instances our Church fathers erred in seeking to bind
by an inflexible and unalterable rule of Divine Right
what God had left unbound. Meanwhile we shall
consider how the Scottish divines of the seventeenth
century support their claim of a Divine Right on
behalf of Presbytery.

It must be quite evident that such a claim when
put forth in that interest is an exclusive one. So
long as I make no claim for any one particular form
of ecclesiastical polity as being of Divine Right and
by Divine prescription, it is quite open for me to say
that circumstances of time and place and varieties
of national character and constitution may warrant
the establishment here of the presbyterian probity,
there of the episcopal, and elsewhere of the con-
gregational. I have known ministers of the Estab-
lished Church of Scotland who did not approve of
the setting up of presbyterian charges in England,
either in connection with the Scottish Synod in
England or with the English Presbyterian Church,
and who said very decidedly that if they were resid-
ing in England they would attach themselves to the
Anglican Establishment. The attachment of such
people is to the national or established church, not
to the presbyterian or episcopal. If they believed
in the Divine Right of episcopacy, they would be

200 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

episcopalians in Scotland; and if they believed in
the jus divinum of presbytery, they would be
presbyterians in England.

Our forefathers believed in the Divine Right of
the presbyterian church polity, and it was upon the
basis of what they held to be of divine institution
that they sought to bring about uniformity of worship
in the two countries of England and Scotland. They
did not regard this matter of government as of the
essence of the Church, and so episcopal and con-
gregational churches were recognised by them as true
churches of Christ. At the same time they were
obliged not only to defend their own position in
preferring the presbyterian system, but also to show
that the principles of their polity were strictly in
accordance with the divine rule and that other
systems could not make this claim.

Hence the writings of Rutherfurd and Gillespie are
not only argumentative, but continuously polemical.
It was perhaps not possible—it certainly seemed to
them impossible—to prove the Divine Right of
presbytery without proving in every detail that
_ episcopacy and independency, in all particulars in
which they differ from presbytery, are without Divine
Right, that the principles and prescriptions of the
Divine Word are not only not with them, but are
distinctly against them. This feature of the case
should be attended to in estimating the genius of
our old Scottish theologians. Some of them may
have been by nature polemically inclined. I suppose

OF DIVINE RIGHT 201

there are men in all ages, professional and non-
professional, who are so disposed, who never become
interested in the treatment of a subject unless they
have an abundance of opponents whose weaknesses
and fallacies they take pleasure in unravelling and
exposing. But I do not think Rutherfurd, Gillespie
and Baillie were of that sort. “I have often and
heartily wished,” writes Gillespie in the opening
words of his preface to Aaron’s Rod Blossoming,
“that I might not be distracted by, or engaged into
polemic writings, of which the world is too full
already, and from which many more learned and
idoneous [qualified] have abstained ; and I did accord-
ingly resolve that, in this controversial age, I should
be slow to write, swift to read and learn.” Yet he
felt controversy to be a public duty which he dared
not put aside. “I have had much ado,” he says,
“to gain so many horae subsecivae from the works
of my public calling as might suffice for this work.
I confess it hath cost me much pains.”

Baillie, in the dedication to Lauderdale of his
Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, says: “ It
has been of a long time the wish of my heart to have
had nothing to do with polemic writings ; the bodies
of soldiers are not more subject to wounds and mani-
fold hardships than the minds of disputant divines do
lie open to various vexations. The weary, starved
and bleeding soldier longs no more for a safe peace
than a spirit harassed in the toilsome labyrinth of
thorny debates pants for that quietness which only

202 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

the final overthrow and full subjugation of error can
produce.” It would be easy to multiply passages of a
similar character to show that, keen and relentless as
these men were in controversy, they never regarded
this as their proper work, but looked upon it in the
light of an interruption to their work which was
thrust upon them against their will, and which they
took up only by the way. They were builders of
God’s city, but the presence and venomous activity of
the enemy made it necessary for them, like Nehemiah
and his fellow-builders, to use one hand in building,
while with the other hand they carried a sword, ay
and used it too.

The principle of the Divine Right of Church
government is discussed in great detail in two very
Important works of George Gillespie, to which we
have not yet referred:—A Dispute against the
English Popish Ceremonies; and An Assertion of the
Government of the Church of Scotland.2 The Dispute
was published in a stormy time. It appeared during
the summer of 1637, when the attempt was made in
Edinburgh to introduce the liturgy which roused the
wrath of Jenny Geddes. When it was issued the

1 [A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies obtruded on the
Church of Scotland ; Wherein not only our own arguments against the
same are strongly confirmed, but likewise the answers and defences of
our opposites, such as Hooker, Mortoune, Burges, Sprint, Paybody,
Andrews, Saravia, Tiler, Spotswood, Lindsay, Forbesse, etc., are
particularly confuted. By George Gillespie, Minister at Edinburgh.]

2 [An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland, in the
points of Ruling Elders, and of the authority of Presbyteries and
Synods. With A Postscript, in answer to a Treatise lately published
against Presbyterial government. ]

OF DIVINE RIGHT 203

author was a youth of four and twenty, and as it was
printed abroad it is supposed that it was written some
two years earlier. There is no trace in it of crudeness
or immaturity. The writer's own view is clearly
stated and consistently maintained throughout the
whole discussion. Whatever is of Divine Right in
church government and worship, he contends must
have a place given to it; whatever is not of Divine
Right must have no quarter shown to it. And so he
proceeds to deal with the arguments of those who
sought to force on the Scottish Church those English
ceremonies which he regarded as popish. Some of the
advocates of these practices maintained that they were
necessary; some only ventured to say they were
expedient ; some held they were lawful and therefore
tolerable ; while a fourth party regarded all ceremonies
as matters of indifferency, and so not to be scrupled
at. Gillespie addresses himself in four parts to the
four questions as to whether the ceremonies were
necessary, expedient, lawful, or indifferent. Under
each of these heads he has something forcible, some-
thing to the point to say. The inexpediency of them,
~ if not necessary, is easily shown by a reference to the
enormous trouble which the obtruding of them oc-
easioned. It is on the point of their lawfulness that
the presbyterian disputant spends his strength. If
the ceremonies be lawful it can only be by their
having the sanction and authority of God’s Word.
He finds that they are devoid of this warrant, inas-
much as they are superstitious and monuments of a

204 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

by-past superstition. They occasion association with
idolaters and from the significant and mystical nature
of them they lead to idolatry. The great bishops and
divines of the English Church, including such really
great men as Andrewes and Hooker, make a very
sorry figure when they attempt to obtain authority
from Scripture texts for the sign of the cross in

baptism—from the marking in the forehead mentioned:

in Ezekiel and Revelation, and for the observance of
Easter—from the apostolic command to keep the

feast in remembrance of our Passover, Christ. No —

more successful are they when they seek under cover
of the injunction, Let everything be done decently
and in order, to obtain Scripture sanction for all the
ceremonies of their Church.

In this book Gillespie's work was wholly critical
and destructive. The thesis which he had to maintain
was simply that the supporters of the ceremonies in
question had failed to show any Divine Right for
them; and the conclusion reached was that Scottish
presbyterians, who require a Divine Right for their
worship and government, are entitled, and are indeed
in duty bound to refuse to allow them. His other
book to which we have referred, An Assertion of the
Government of the Church of Scotland, deals con-
structively with the question, and shows how presby-
terians can claim a Divine Right for the institution of
ruling elders, and of the various church courts which
form a part of their polity. To one not familiar with
the ecclesiastical writings of the Scottish theologians

OF DIVINE RIGHT 205

it must seem strange to find on a casual inspection of
their books, the prominent place that is given to the
ruling elder and the frequent occurrence of lengthy
discussions on the necessity and nature of his office.
But when we consider carefully the object which they
have in their writings, the proving, namely, of the
Divine Right of the presbyterian polity, we see at
once that the determining the scriptural warrant of
the office was to them of first importance. So soon as
it was proved that there was a Divine Warrant for
the eldership by which the discipline of the Church
was conducted, and for the courts in which ministers
and elders sat as members and governed the affairs of
the Church, the case for prelacy and congregationalism
was gone and the case for presbytery was won.
Baillie in his Dissuasive against the Errors of the
Times, James Wood in his Examination of Lockyer's
Lecture on the Church, Rutherfurd in his Plea for
Paul's Presbytery, and in his Right of Church
Government, and many others deal with the question
of the ruling elder; but nowhere is the question so
methodically and thoroughly discussed as in Gillespie’s
Assertion. This very able and creditably concise
work was published in 1641, four years later than the
one of which we have spoken.

The author seems to have been provoked or
stimulated into writing it by the appearance of a
work entitled Assertion of Episcopacy by Divine
Right; which had been published during the previous
[} Episcopacie by Divine Right asserted. In three parts. London, 1640.]

206 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

year. It was written by the learned, eloquent and
pious Bishop Joseph Hall. It was a very pretentious
and not a very wise book. The author offered to
forfeit his life to justice and his reputation to shame
if any living man could show that ever there was a
ruling elder in the Christian world till Farrel and
Viret created such an office-bearer. Gillespie had no
desire to take him at his word in the matter of his
life, but he had no scruple in saying that his own
book was of itself, without any reply, quite sufficient
to give sentence against his reputation for ever.

The first part of his treatise is devoted by Gillespie
to the subject of ruling elders. It consists of fourteen
chapters. He explains the different significations of
the word in Scripture, calls\the term “lay elder” a
- nickname, characterises the distinction of the clergy
and laity as “popish and anti-christian,” and insists
upon its discontinuance. He then shows what the func-
tions of ruling elders are, in so doing distinguishing
“the power of order and the power of jurisdiction, which
are different in sundry respects,” and concluding that
“the calling of ruling elders consisteth in these two
things: 1. To assist and voice in all assemblies of the
Church, which is their power of jurisdiction. 2. To
watch diligently over the whole flock, and to do by
authority that which other Christians ought to do in
charity, which is their power of order. He then
proceeds to prove the Divine Right of these elders of
jurisdiction and order. He begins the proof by
showing that the officers who sat with the Jewish

OF DIVINE RIGHT 207

priests and gave their advice and votes in ecclesiastical
courts, were not civil magistrates as Saravia and
Bilson seek to make out, but distinctly elders. Then,
in four consecutive chapters, he deals carefully and
minutely with four separate New Testament passages,
in which, under different expressions or terms, he
understands our Lord and His apostles to speak of
the office-bearers in question and their functions. He
takes up first of all the passage in St Matthew xviii.
17, in which our Lord enjoins the brother who has
failed by private admonition to bring an offender to
repentance to “tell it unto the Church.” This Church
is a representative meeting called in 1 Timothy iv. 14
“the presbytery,” consisting of pastors and ruling
elders, a court entitled to be called ‘‘ the Church,” and
to act in her name because both teachers and _ hearers
are represented in its membership. Then the second
Scripture argument is taken from Romans xii. 8,
where the apostle urges that he who “ruleth” should
do so “ with diligence.” ‘The ruler, here distinguished
from the pastor and teacher, corresponds exactly to
the idea of the presbyterian elder. The third argu-
ment is based upon 1 Corinthians xii. 28, where a list
of officers is given, in which list Gillespie identifies
“helps” with deacons, and “ governments ” with ruling
elders. The closing Scripture proof is the statement
in 1 Timothy v. 17: “Let the elders that rule well
be counted worthy of double honour, especially they
who labour in the word and doctrine.” This passage,
I daresay, all will admit to be by far the most

208 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

important and explicit one in the New Testament
on the subject under discussion. It shows, as the
assertor maintains, that there were some elders in the
Churches who did not labour in word and doctrine, and
yet might be worthy of all honour simply for ruling well.

It must be admitted by every candid student of the
subject that these passages taken together supply very
strong and convincing proof that even in the Apostolic
Church this distinction between teaching and ruling
was made, and that separate offices were distinguished
in which those could serve who had the gift of
teaching and those who had aptitude for ruling.
This in the narrow sense constitutes the proof for
the Divine Right of the ruling eldership. But
Gillespie proceeds to show that his, that is to say,
the presbyterian interpretation and understanding of
the passages in question determined the practice of
the early Christian Church; and he quotes passages
from Ambrose, Epiphanius, Basil, Cyprian, Chrysostom,
Jerome, Augustine, Isidore of Spain and Origen. He
comments upon the quotations in order to prove that
in the churches known to these fathers there were
rulers whose duty it was to inquire into the character
of those seeking admission to Church membership, and
to consider the debarring of the unworthy and dis-
qualified. Further, in a very interesting chapter, he
gives the opinions of Calvin and other prominent
Continental and English Reformed theologians, and
the practice of all the principal Reformed Churches on
this subject. Gillespie’s chief opponents, Coleman

OF DIVINE RIGHT 209

and Hussey, as also Archbishop Whitgift, would
allow ruling elders and a divine church government
under pagan magistrates, but under a Christian
magistrate they maintained there was no room for
such. ~

Our Scottish presbyterian fathers are sometimes
blamed for insisting upon a proof of the Divine Right
of an institution in a narrow and ultra-literal fashion,
by requiring perfect exactness of detail in the Scripture
pattern. It would be very easy indeed to quote
passages from the writings of Rutherfurd and
Gillespie, and still more abundantly from the sermons
and popular writings of our divines, earlier and later,
in which they seek from Scripture texts and incidents
literal and categorical injunctions in favour of some
mere mode or detail in the observance of an ordinance
or the practice of some act of worship. They often
spiritualised historical persons and events, found
types in colours and in shapes, in things on earth
and in things in heaven, and in defence of this they
were constantly quoting the words of God addressed
to Moses: “Look that thou make them after their
pattern, which was showed thee in the mount.” In
many cases this is more than anything else a mode of
speech—a fashion, and not a good one, which prevailed
at that time in all schools, Romish, Prelatical and
Presbyterian. It is none the more commendable for
its prevalence. But we can easily understand that
many who gave way to it as a habit were not bound
to it by any far-reaching typological principle.

0

210 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

Figures were used in a loose way, and references to
types were made with no more seriousness or studied
care than a modern speaker takes when he uses an
illustration. In serious argument, however, Rutherfurd
and Gillespie were careful enough in limiting the
application of Scripture proof and the claim for
Divine Right to that which belonged to the essence
of the institution or practice with which they were
concerned.

An instance of this occurs in the beginning of the
second part of Gillespie’s Assertion. He is there
dealing with the question of kirk-sessions and the
eldership in particular congregations. It seems to
him that the New Testament pattern of presbyteries,
in the sense of elderships, recognised only one body
and one common meeting for the multitudes of
Christians in such large cities as Rome, Corinth and
Ephesus, although in each of these centres of popula-
tion there were several places of assembly in which
the Christians were accustomed to meet as separate
congregations. Had he regarded himself as bound
down to every detail in the practice of the primitive
Apostolic Church he would have insisted upon the
institution of common sessions for cities and districts,
by which all the discipline and government of the
congregations within these bounds should be exercised.
So far from doing so, however, this strenuous advocate
of the jus divinum of presbytery distinctly recognises
the right of taking into consideration the altered
circumstances of the age, and of paying regard not to

OF DIVINE RIGHT 211

the letter of the local and temporal application of the
principle, but to the spirit of it. ‘“ We are to dis-
tinguish,” he writes, “betwixt the condition of the
primitive churches before the division of parishes and
the state of our churches now after such division. At
the first, when the multitude of Christians in those
great cities of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, etc., was not
divided into several parishes, the common presbytery
in the city did suffice for the government of the
whole, and there was no need of a particular consistory
of elders for every assembly and congregation of
Christians within the city. But after that parishes
were divided, and Christian congregations planted in
the rural villages, as well as in the cities, from
henceforth it was necessary that every congregation
should have at hand, within itself, a certain consistory
for some acts of Church government, though still
those of greater importance were reserved to the
greater presbytery. .. . Now in this we keep our-
selves as close to the pattern as the alteration of the
Church’s condition, by the division of parishes, will
suffer us; that is to say, we have acommon presbytery
for governing the congregations within a convenient
circuit; but, withal, our congregations have, ad
manum, among themselves an inferior eldership for
lesser acts of government, though, in respect of the
distance of the seat of the common presbytery from
sundry of our parishes, they cannot have that ease
and benefit of nearness which the Apostolic Churches
had, yet, by the particular elderships, they have

212 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

as great ease of this kind as conveniently can
be. 2

In the attitude thus assumed by Gillespie we have,
it seems to me, a thoroughly reasonable and wisely
moderate statement of the claim of Divine Right in
Church government. So also Rutherfurd in his tract,
A Dispute touching Scandall and Christian hbertie,
takes up the same ground. He deals specially with
Hooker, and both in logic and common sense proves
himself vastly superior to his antagonist. Hooker?
charged his Puritan opponents with blaming the Pre-
latical party for using forms and ceremonies against
which their only objection is that they are used in
the Church of Rome. He represented them as saying :
There must be no communion nor fellowship with
-papists, neither in doctrine, ceremonies, nor govern-
ment. It is not enough that we are divided from
the Church of Rome by the single wall of doctrine,
retaining as we do part of their ceremonies and almost
all of their government. Government, or ceremonies
or whatsoever it be that is popish—away with it.
This is the thing they require in us, he says, the utter
relinquishment of all things popish. Rutherfurd gives
an admirable answer to all this in general, that in
doctrine neither likeness nor unlikeness to Rome is
the rule, because it is not our religion, Romish or
Protestant, that the Word of God is to be conformed,
but our religion is to be conformed to the Word of
God. In answer to the charge of rejecting ceremonies
1[Second Part, chap. ii. § 7. p. 44, Meek’s Edition, 1846.] ?IV. iii. 3.

OF DIVINE RIGHT Dis

and government as popish, though lawful and agree-
able to the Word, if not expressly commanded by God,
Rutherfurd maintains that we do not plead for a
government to be in all things commanded in the
Word, but for one warranted by the Word, either
according to command, or promise, or moral practice.
Scripture, he says, is our rule, not in any literal
fashion, but in fundamentals of salvation, in all
morals of both tables, in all institutions and in cir-
cumstantials of worship. Church government, there-
fore, is to be determined by, or to have warrant from
Scripture, as an institution, because it is a super-
natural ordinance or help above nature, to guide the
Church to a supernatural happiness. And so the
Church cannot be governed by the light of nature
or by the laws of moral philosophy, or civil prudence,
or human laws, as cities, commonwealths, and king-
doms are. Rutherfurd’s contention is that everything
in doctrine, ceremony, and government must have a
warrant, not necessarily an express and literal com-
mand, in the Word of God. When Hooker says we
retain certain ceremonies because we judge them
profitable, we see what comes of abandoning the
claim of a Divine Right, and being satisfied with a
claim of convenience or expediency. Rutherfurd
characterises this as “a proud reply.” ‘‘ Might not
Pharisees say as much? We retain the precepts and
traditions of men used by our fathers because we judge
them profitable; and who authorised Christ and his
disciples to judge the Church?” But, replies the

214 #WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

Scottish divine, ‘‘ Christ said their ceremonies were
the doctrines of men, and so unlawful, and the like
argument bring we against the ceremonies, and so
they must be unprofitable. They ought to give
another reason of their laws than, ‘we judge’; we
affirm it is God’s prerogative to say that.”

In answer to the objection that the particulars of
the Westminster Directory of Worship are not in
Scripture Rutherfurd says, in another treatise, that
we are no further commanded in point of uniformity
than the general rules of the Word lead us, and com-
pulsion, where God hath no compelling commandment,
we utterly disclaim, nor can men or the Church, or all
the assemblies on earth make laws in matters of God’s
_ worship, where the Supreme Lawgiver hath made
none.

Such then is the reasonable and thoroughly work-
able principle laid down by presbyterian theolo-
gians as to when and how far they may and must
advance the claim of a Divine Right for any in-
stitution or practice of the Church. Prescription of
details or of every particular in worship and govern-
ment is not expected or desired. What is wanted
is a warrant in God’s Word which need not be a new
prescription. It may only be a consequence from
some prescription or institution already established.
In regard to matters of worship and government,
surely we shall not quarrel with our ecclesiastical
forefathers for requiring a warrant from the Scriptures.
That all of them, on all occasions, observed the liberal

OF DIVINE RIGHT 215

explanation which they had given to the idea of
Divine warrant, would be to expect from them a
consistency in reasoning and an evenness of temper
in controversy altogether more than human. Narrow,
no doubt, they sometimes were in consequence of
mistaking small matters for things important and
charging ceremonies possibly harmless with tendencies
dangerous and deadly. But I am perfectly well
assured of this that in the vast majority of cases in
which charges of this kind are brought against them
the accuser is wrong and they are in the right.
Things that many are wont nowadays to call harmless
seemed to them, and really were when rightly under-
stood, anything but harmless. Nothing more weak
or superficial can well be conceived than the scornful
judgment often passed on these conscientiously-con-
vinced, enlightened, much-enduring men. Scribblers,
to whom these great thinkers and scholars would have
scrupled to reply, regarding them as illiterate, ignora-
muses whom it would be scarcely dignified to notice,
take it upon them to arraign before the judgment bar
of their conceit such protagonists as John Knox,
Andrew Melville, and Samuel Rutherfurd ; and doubt-
less they would summon many more if they only
knew their names. Denounced as “narrow, scrupu-
lous, bigoted,” they are said to have rejected harm-
less things simply because their opponents held by
them. This charge though often made is utterly and
demonstrably untrue. In regard to what they rejected
they believed that they had good reason to believe that

216 #WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

they were not harmless. Take one example. Every-
body knows about the Five Articles of Perth Even
critics of the Scottish Reformers and Covenanters,
who know practically nothing about Scottish Church
History, know the list of these points at which, accord-
ing to the critics, the Scottish presbyterians of the
seventeenth century so unreasonably and senselessly
scrupled. Well, take the first of these articles which
enjoined kneeling when receiving the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper. How silly and absurd, say the self-
appointed and self-satisfied critics. Is there any
difference between receiving the communion sitting
or standing or kneeling? If any, is not the attitude
of kneeling the most becoming? That is all that they
see, and they think that that is all they need to say.
- But in the Church from which this custom was
taken kneeling was an act of adoration of that which
was on the altar as unto God. The Romish worshipper
knelt before the host because it was in his belief
the very body of the Son of God. The presbyterian
protestants, whose devotion had not overcome or be-
clouded their common sense, could see in the element

[i “ The finishing touch was given to the work of overthrowing pres-
bytery in Scotland and conforming the Church in discipline and worship
to that of England by the Assembly at Perth in 1618, the last that was
held during the reign of James. The famous Five Articles of Perth
were as follows :—1l. Kneeling at the Communion; 2. Private Com-
munion for the Sick ; 3. Baptism to be on the next Lord’s Day after the
birth, and in cases of need in private houses ; 4. Episcopal Confirmation
of the Young ; and 5. The Observance of Holidays, especially days com-
memorating the birth, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord
and his sending down of the Spirit.” The History of the Church im Scot-
land from the earliest times down to the present day. By John Macpherson,
M.A., 1901.]

OF DIVINE RIGHT 217

only bread ; and, therefore, to them kneeling in adora-
tion before it was idolatry, not a mere question of
attitude, but one of worshipping what had been
created and manufactured. In almost every case in
which our fathers refused to allow a ceremony to be
introduced it was a ‘“‘nocent” or hurtful ceremony,
one the observance of which was calculated to lead
the worshipper back into those errors and superstitions,
which, at so great cost, they had cast off.

In these lectures notice has been taken of only a
very small department of Scottish theology. It would
be a grave injustice to these great men to suppose
that ecclesiastical discussions constituted the main
work of their lives. They were not, as some seem to
think, churchmen first and Christians after. These
Church questions were of supreme interest to them
simply because they believed—believed with all their
heart—that they were essentially and inseparably
bound up with the interests of Christ and His cause.
It was in vindication of the crown rights of the
Redeemer that they fought so tenaciously and un-
compromisingly. When it was a matter that simply
concerned their personal interests, when it was a slight
or indignity cast upon their own persons they were
forbearing, meek, unwilling to say a word or lift a
hand in their own defence. Their unselfishness is one
of their outstanding characteristics. All the most
distinguished of them were tempted time after time
with opportunities of splendid self aggrandisement.
If only they had temporized a little, if they had been

218 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

willing to leave unsaid what was unpalatable to the
powerful and the great, if they had agreed to com-
promises and accommodations, the highest dignities
were within their reach, wealth and rank and honours
would have been showered upon them. But being
what they were this could not be. Capable they were
as none else of that day and nation were capable.
They could have filled, with distinction to themselves,
and with advantage to the commonwealth, the highest
places in the land. But the conditions demanded of
those who would accept of such appointments made it
impossible for them to entertain the idea for a single
moment.

Robert Bruce’ had shown his incomparable abilities
as a statesman when he filled the king’s place during
his absence in Norway to meet his bride in November
1509, in a way that won the monarch’s hearty thanks
and the gratitude of all the people. He had shown
his wonderful skill as a theologian and preacher,
when he delivered those singularly profound, yet
popular and instructive sermons on the sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper, which have attaimed the honour,
not yet bestowed on any of his brethren, of beimg
rendered in smooth and graceful language, so as to be
read with ease and pleasure by all who are interested
in their great theme” And this great man, fit to

[!} The Rev. Robert Bruce, Minister of Edinburgh. A son of the
Laird of Airth, Stirlingshire. Born about the year 1559. Died at his
own house of Kinnaird in 1631. “Buried in an aisle of the Kirk of

Larbert, biggit i his own time.”]
[? Sermons upon the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: Preached in

OF DIVINE RIGHT 219

preside in the cabinet of State, capable of adorning
any university as its head, able to guide the counsels of
the Church and to preach the gospel to the poor, accused
by base and baseless calumny of disloyalty, and losing
royal favour because he sought to dissuade the king
from following an unpatriotic and unkingly policy,
was deprived of his ministry in Edinburgh, deprived
of a life pension that had been bestowed upon him,
sent for a time to banishment in the north, and then
obliged to continue unoccupied in privacy and
obscurity through all the remaining years of his life.
Andrew Melville had a grasp of principles and
capacity for business in regard to the affairs of State as
remarkable as his rare literary culture and mastery of
divinity in all its fields) Calm, dispassionate his-
torians, looking without prejudice on the record of the
counsels which he offered to his sovereign, will tell
you that had King James only been wise enough to
take his loyal subject's advice, he would have saved
his country much suffering and his own memory much
disgrace. Not only was Melville an efficient professor
in Glasgow, but under his energetic and most practical
direction the whole course of studies and the method
of teaching in the College was thoroughly reorganised,

the Kirk of Edinburgh be M. Robert Bruce, Minister of Christe’s
Evangel there: at the time of the celebration of the Supper, as they
were received from his mouth, 1617. Republished from the original
Scottish edition by the Wodrow Society in 1843 and edited by Dr
William Cunningham. The same “ Done into English, with a Biograph-
ical Sketch, by the Rev. John Laidlaw, D.D., Edinburgh. With
Portrait and other illustrations.” Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier,
1901.]

220 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

so that, from being merely a school of medizeval meta-
physics, it became, in the full modern sense of the
word, a university fit to enter into comparison with
any European seat of learning. Transferred to St
Andrews, he conferred new lustre on its ancient halls.
He might have confined himself to his ordinary
collegiate duties, and in his study and classroom
he would have found abundance of congenial occupa-
tion to fill the hours of his day and the years of his
life. Had he done so, he would have passed a quiet
and easy life without harassment or molestation.
But knowing what he did, and conscious of his
powers, he felt that he would be unfaithful to the
trust which God had committed to him, and be a
traitor to the cause of spiritual liberty if he did not
speak out. He did speak out, and not too loudly,
whatever men may say. For not then, if ever, would
' a simpering, subdued whisper have been heard. And
his reward was the bitter hatred of the silly king.
For years he suffered from the spiteful vindictiveness
of one who knew not how otherwise to treat a faithful
counsellor whose advice went counter to his short-
sighted policy than by harassing and confining and
ultimately hurrying him out of the land. It is
humiliating for Scotsmen to read the story of the
Hampton Court Conference, and to see the Melvilles
and others, the greatest, ablest, and wisest of Scot-
land’s sons, insulted and contumeliously used by the
first Scottish King of England, who was not good
enough or wise enough to know goodness and wisdom

OF DIVINE RIGHT 2a

when they were before him, or to make use of them
when the opportunity was given him. After a year
spent in fruitless wrangling, there followed four years’
confinement in the Tower—the words are soon
spoken, but they tell of a long and dreary period of
inaction for one who was yearning with all his heart
and soul to serve his generation. And then at last,
when it became evident that no opportunity of
serving in Scotland would be given, he accepted an
invitation to fill the collegiate chair of divinity in the
University of Sedan, and there, along with other two
distinguished Scots, he faithfully discharged the
professorial office. Then, having glorified God and
profited his fellow-men, Andrew Melville finished his
course, a course of which his king and those in power
had proved themselves unworthy.

Samuel Rutherfurd had not the same opportunity
as Bruce and Melville of engaging directly in the
political conflicts of his time. Before his public
career began, King James had died and bequeathed
to his unhappy son his notion that the right of
absolute and despotic power formed a part of the royal
prerogative. Charles, like his father, sought to assert
his right as King to absolute supremacy over all persons
and causes. Rutherfurd wrote his Lex Rex: The

1 [Walter Donaldson, a native of Aberdeen, and known as the author
of several learned works, was Principal and Professor of Natural and
Moral Philosophy during all the time Melville was in the University.
Another of his countrymen, John Smith, was also a Professor of Philo-
sophy. Melville’s colleague professor was Daniel Tilerus. He taught
the system, while Melville prelected on the Scriptures.]

222 WHAT ACCORDING TO SCOTTISH THEOLOGY IS

Law and the Prince against the tyranny and arbitrary
government, against setting the King over the law,
and in order to show that it is only according to law
that the King must rule and judge. His views are
what even now would be regarded as advanced. In
his judgment the King’s power is from the people: he
preferred an elected to a hereditary King; parliament
makes laws, the King can only execute them; the
sovereign is not above law, nor is he its sole inter-
preter. Thus and in other ways Rutherfurd served—
and served nobly—the interests of the State. But
yet more extensive, and not less important, were his
services to the Church. The lectures of this course
have been largely an exposition of his views regarding
the Church in its idea, membership, constitution, and
‘independence, so I do not need to refer again to that
department of his work. As a divine, his contribu-
tions to theological science have been great. Charles
seemed as determined to press on the Church of
Scotland Laud’s Arminianism as he was to assert his
own supremacy in the government of Church and
State. Rutherfurd wrote elaborate examinations of
the Arminian system, in which the principles of
Calvinism are expounded with clearness and fulness,
evidencing a splendid scholarship, and, up to his day,
complete. These works may still be read by students
with profit in not too easy Latin—valuable for their
exactness of definition, their recognition of the essen-
tial elements in doctrine, and their vindication of its
practical use. But, strange as it may seem and hard

OF DIVINE RIGHT 223

to believe, these great ecclesiastical, controversial, and
doctrinal works—works great in bulk and great in
depth—were only the occupation of his leisure hours.
The time for studying the controversies and writing
the results of his studies he took off his sleep. His
proper work in Anwoth and wherever he might be
was preaching to the people the glorious gospel of the
grace of God. He was unwearied in his labours for
the conversion of sinners and the instruction of God’s
children. If, in controversy with those who were
doing, as he thought, the enemy’s work, his language
seems sometimes harsh and severe, his preaching was
of the love of God to mankind sinners. His Letters
show how he luxuriated in the Divine love, and
yearned after closer and fuller fellowship of love with
Christ. It was of the love of God in Christ that he
spoke to all men. He surely deserved well of his
country ; and yet he barely escaped the scaffold.
Lex Rex had the honour of being burned by the order
of dissolute cavaliers in London, Edinburgh, and St
Andrews, who could scarcely read it, much less
understand it. For himself the tyrant’s summons
came too late. He was already on his death-bed, and
on hearing of it, calmly remarked. that he had got
another summons before a superior Judge and judi-
eatory, and sent the message, “‘I behove to answer my
first summons, and ere your day arrive, I will be
where few kings and great folk come.”

Such are some specimens of the work done by our
Scottish divines, and of the rewards which in their

224 SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

lifetime they received. But being dead, they are
yet speaking. The civil and religious liberty that we
enjoy we owe, under God, to them, and many of the
familiar missions in which we give expression to that
liberty are but the echoes of those voices which the
noise and violence of tyrants could not drown. These
lectures will have served no mean purpose if they
awaken an interest in the story of our Reformed and
Covenanting forefathers, and induce some to study at
first hand the works about the Christian Church and
Christian doctrine which these great men have
written.

INDEX

Aorts, The Black, 168, 176.

Adamson, Patrick, 173, 175.

Alesius, 24.

Alford, Dean, on St Matthew xviii.
15-17, 140.

Anabaptists, 22.

Andrewes, 204.

Antichrist, Protestant Orders taken
from, 113.

Antinomians, 22.

Arran, Earl of, opposition to Andrew
Melville, 165.
Articles, The Five, of Perth, 28,

216 n.
Assembly, General, of 1579, Act of
on Evils of the Kirk, 161.
Augustine, 119.

Bariuiz, Robert, of Glasgow, Life
and Writings of, 34 et seqg.;
Historical Vindication of Church
of Scotland, 172 et seg., 201.

Bannerman, Professor James, 96 n,
40.

Baptism, by women and laymen, 97
et seg.; by Church of Rome,
98 n.

Barnabas, see Paul.

Black, Rev. David, of St Andrews,
170.

Boece, 24.

Boston, Thomas, of Ettrick, 3, 5, 25,
51, 82, 85 et seg., 92, 124.

Boyd, Robert, of Trochrig, 24;
Sketch of Life and Writings,
26 et seq., 55.

— Zachary, 28.

Bramhall, Bishop of Londonderry,
37

Brown, John, of Wamphray, 3, 25,
48 et seq., 73, 75, 78 et seg., 90,
93, 102, 103, 115, 126.

Bruce, Prof. A. B., 140.

—— Rev. Robert, 218.

Buchanan, George, 24.

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 18, 130 7.

Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, 120.

CaLLine and Election, 78.

Calvin, John, 208.

Cameron, John, Life and Writings
of, 31 et seg.

Richard, 115.

Cameronians, The, 115.

Cargill, Donald, 115; his Excom-
munications, 149.

Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scot-
land, 130 n.

Chrysostom and Epiphanius, 105.

Church, The, Place of in Scottish
Church History and Divinity, 1,
2; idea of, 54 et seg. ; member-
ship in, 54 et seg. ; Romish and
Protestant conceptions of, 60;
visible and invisible, 63, 69;
notes of visible, 80; unity of,
91 et seg. ; admission into, 95;
purity of, 129 et seg. ; censures
and excommunication by, 129
et seg. ; power and jurisdiction
of, 158 et seq.

— of Rome, recognition of by
Scottish divines, 97 ; difference
between and Scottish Reformers
and Covenanters, 110.

— of Scotland, theological writ-
ings ‘of, 5; in what sense
critical, 11; principles of Scrip-
ture interpretation, 13; value
of the literature, 18.

Coleman, Thomas, 191 ef seg., 208.

Confession, Scottish, of 1560, 56; on

Baptism, 98.

—— Westminster, 102.

Congregationalists, idea of the
Church, 61.

Conscience, Rutherfurd’s description
of, 155.

Constantine, statement to the

bishops, 184.
Cotton, John, 103.

Covenanters, The Scottish, 91, 110.
Cunningham, Principal John, upon
Andrew Melville, 164, 168.

Cyprian, see Stephen.

Pe

225

226 INDEX

Derciarations, Rutherglen, San- | Grub, Professor, Aberdeen, estimate
quhar, Lanark, 115. . of John Maxwell, 36.

Dickson, David, of Irvine and
Glasgow, 5. Hat, Bishop Joseph, Assertion of

Directory, of Worship, Westminster,
214.

Discipline, Books of, 134.

— First Book of, 139 n, 147,
153 n.

— Second Book of, 23, 160 e¢ seq.,
177, 180.

Division, distinguished from heresy
and schism, 104.

Doctrine, The Key of, 144 et seq.

Douglas, Gavin, 5.

Drummond, of Hawthornden, 5.

Dunbar, William, 5.

Durham, Rev. James, of Glasgow, 3,
5, 25, 47 et seg., 91, 103; on
Scandalous Divisions, 104 et
seq., 106, 115 et seg., 126, 186 e
seq., 141 et seqg., 185.

Ep@ar, Dr A., of Mauchline, on
Discipline in the Church | of
Scotland, 153 et seq.

Elders, ruling distinct from teach-
ing, 206 et seq.

Election, see Calling.

Epiphanius, see Chrysostom.

Episcopacy, domination of in Scot-
land, promotion of prelates
during, 162.

Erastianism, opposed by Scottish
divines, 184; advocated by
Thomas Coleman in West-
minster Assembly and before
House of Commons, 193.

Erskines, The, 126.

FarRBAiRN, Principal, of Oxford,
upon Adam Gib, 126.

Familists, The sect of, 22.

Froude, J. A., on Keformers and
Toleration, 156 et seq.

Gis, Rev. Adam, 126.

Gillespie, Rev. George, of Edin-
burgh, 3, 5, 16, 25; life and
writings of, 38 e¢ seq., 90, 103,
187; replies to Coleman, 194 e¢
seq., 198, 200, 201 ef seg., 205,
210.

Grace, Saving, distinguished from a
serious profession, 145.

Graham, Rev. Henry Grey, Glasgow,
The Social Life of Scotland in
the 18th Century, 133 n.

Episcopacy by Divine Right, 205.
Henderson, Rev. Alexander, 92.
Heresy, distinct from schism and

division, 104.

Hofmann, Commentary on Ephesians,

12.

Hooker, Richard, 104, 204, 213.
Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, 119 n.
Hussey, Joseph, Puritan, 209.
Hutchison, Rev. M., 124 n.

Independents, see Congregationalists.
Informatory Vindication, 115, 121.

James the VI., 27; rebuked in
Church by Patrick Simpson of
Stirling, 135, 172.

Jurisdiction, how defined by Scot-
tish Divines, 175 ; see Mair.

Jus Divinum, see Right.

Keys, The Power of the, 144.
Kirk-Sessions, Scottish, misrepre-
sentations of, 130, 132 et seq.
Knox, John, 3, 5, 92, 113; his
“Liturgy,” 147, 148, 215.

LANARK, see Declarations.

Laud, Archbishop, Arminianism of,
222.

Lex Rex, see Rutherfurd.

Libellatici, The, 123 n.

Liberty, civil and religious, due to
Scottish Divines, 224.

Lightfoot, The Orientalist, 197.

Liturgy, Scottish, see Knox.

Lockyer, Nicholas, Independent,
Lecture on the Church, 205.

Luther, Martin, 113.

Lyndsay, Sir David, 5.

MACMILLAN, Rev. John, The
Cameronian, 124 n.

Macmillanites, The, 115.

Macneill, Rev. John, the Cameronian
Preacher, 124 n.

Macpherson, Rev. John, see Editor’s
Preface ; quotations from upon
Five Articles of Perth, 216 7.

Magistrate, Duty of tothe Church, 185

Mair, Dr William, Jurisdiction in
Matters Ecclesiastical, Criticism
of, 178 et seg., note, 190.

Major, Jobn, Scottish historian, 24.

INDEX

Marrow Controversy, 51.

Matthew, St., xviii. 15-17, teaching
of regarding Offences and the
Church, 138.

Maxwell, John, The deposed Bishop
of Ross, 35, 173, 175.

M‘Crie, Dr Thomas, on Andrew

Melville, 166 n, 167 n.

Dr Thomas, jun., 135.
M‘Ward, Robert, 25; Writings of,
50; Answer to Burnet, 120.

Meletius and Paulinus, 119 e¢ seg.

Melville, Andrew, 24, 55, 91, 92;
Interviews with James VI., 164
et seg., 215, 219 et seq.

—— James, Diary, 169, 171.

— Sir Robert, 165 n.

Meyer, on Matthew xviii. 15-17, 140.

Moray, Earl of, 135.

Miiller, Julius, 140.

Order, Book of Common, 149.

Order, The, of the Ecclesiastical
Discipline in the Form of Prayers
and Ministration of the Sacra-
ments (1556), 150.

Order, The, of Excomunication and

of Public Repentance, 148, 152.

Ordinances, Sealing, 77.

PARLIAMENT, Scottish, Act of (1592),
178

Pastors, belong to Church Universal,
99

Paul, and Barnabas contention be-
tween, 105.

Paulinus, see Meletius.

Perfectionism, 74.

Potestas Ordinis, and Potestas Juris-
dictionis, 177.

ae aie to the Church,
109 e¢

REGENERATION, not a requirement
of Church membership, 79.

Renwick, Rev. James, 115, 121.

Right, Divine, 191 et seg., 196.

Rivet, Andrew, 2

Robertson, Principal William, on
Andrew Melville, 167.

Robinson, John, 66, 103.

Rollock, Principal, 27.

Rome, Church of, assumption by, of
Civil and Ecclesiastical Power,
159.

Ross, Rev. Dr William, Glimpses of

Pastoral Work in Covenanting
Times, 134 n.

227

Rutherfurd, Samuel, 3, 5; Use of
Scripture language, 8 ; interpre-
tation of Scripture, 13 ; invited
abroad, 24, 36; writings, 41 et
seg., 55, 62, 64, 73, 78, 80 e¢ seq.,
90, 99, 103 et seg., 113, 115, 126 ;
Due Right of Presbyteries, 137 ;
A Free Disputation against Pre-
tended Liberty of Conscience, 155
et seg.; Lex Rex, 156, 184 et
seqg.,200, 205, 212, 215, 221 et seg.

Rutherglen, see Declarations.

SACRIFICATORES, The, 123 n.

Sanquhar, see Declarations.

Scandal, see Durham.

Seceders, The, of 1733, 125.

their successors, 125.

Sectaries, The, Rutherfurd upon,
99, 137.

Selden, 197.

Separatists, The, 61, 65, 68, 73, 113,
115.

Schism, The sin of, 90, 104.

Scotland, Church of, Animadver-
sions of upon Black Acts, 176.

— Old Church Life in, 154; Re-
ligious and Social Life in during
17th and 18th Centuries, 129.

Simpson, Rev. Patrick, and James
VI., 135.

Society Men, The, 115.

Socinians, opposed by Scottish
Divines, 189.

Spottiswoode, John, civil and eccles-
lastical preferment of, 162.

Stephen, Pope, 105.

THURIFICATORES, The, 123 n.

Toleration, limits of,by J. A. Froude,
156 et seg.

Torwood, see Cargill.

Universities, Frankfurt, Leyden,
Paris, Saumur, Sedan, Utrecht,
24,

WALKER, Dr James of Carnwath, 25,

Welch, John, of ree 128.

Welsh, John, of Ayr, |

Whitgift, Archbishop, 509.

Wilson, Rev. William, of Perth,
125.

Wood, James, Examination of Lock-
yer’s Lecture.

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ZWINcui, 113.

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